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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
















Mystery Stories for Boys 


The Black Schooner 










He was paralyzed with the terrible momentum—Chapter XXVI 





Mystery Stories for Boys 


The 

Black Schooner 


By 

ROY J. SNELL 



The Reilly & Lee Co. 
Chicago 






Printed in the United States of America 


Copyright, 1923 

by 

The Reilly & Lee Co. 


All Rights Reserved 



The Black Schooner 




CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. A Strange Commission. 7 

II. Is This the Mystery?. 15 

III. The Split Rock. 22 

IV. A Mysterious Little Brown 

Squirrei . 27 

V. A Tree-Top Lookout. 34 

VI. Atop the World. 41 

VII. The Mark of the Black 

Schooner . 49 

VIII. The Split Rock Mystery. ... 56 

IX. A Magnificent Battle. 65 

X. Mystery Number Four. 75 

XI. A Strange Watch-Tower... 83 

XII. “ Johnny, I’m Not Afraid . 91 

XIII. “ She's a Schooner All 

Right ” 99 

XIV. A Mystery That Gets a 

Laugh. 105 

XV. Eight Smokes . 119 














Contents 


CHAPTER PAGE 

XVI. An Interrupted Move. 128 

XVII. Flakes From the Sea. 133 

XVIII. Fire Fighters. 140 

XIX. The Masked Man. 148 

XX. Fires That Gleam in the 

Night . 157 

XXI. The Light Teiat Failed. 162 

XXII. A Mysterious Power. 167 

XXIII. The Safe Is Gone. 177 

XXIV. “ They're Chopping at Our 

Tree ” . 182 

XXV. Tottering to a Fall. 188 

XXVI. Whirled Through Space. ... 196 

XXVII. A Clue Given. 205 

XXVIII. A Startling Revelation .... 215 

XXIX. The Flying Dutchman of 

the Ice Floes. 223 

XXX. Now I Am to Know All!. ... 228 

XXXI. Secrets Revealed . 235 

XXXII. Other Mysteries Uncovered. 247 
















The Black Schooner 


CHAPTER I 

A STRANGE COMMISSION 

“ The thing I like about it,” said Pant, squint¬ 
ing his eyes as if in anticipation of events of 
absorbing interest, “ is the straight out-and-out 
mystery of it.” 

Eager for the story which he had crossed 
the continent to hear, Johnny Thompson, light¬ 
weight champion boxer and hero of many thrill¬ 
ing adventures, leaned forward in his chair. 

/ 

“ Oh, there’s no story yet,” smiled Pant, “ but 
unless I miss my guess, there’s going to be; and 
you and I are going to have a hand in it. 

“ You see,” his eyes narrowed again, “ this 
Colonel Remmington owns about all the country 
on both sides of the Katekomb River, which is 
twenty miles up the bay from here. It’s timber 


/ 


7 


8 


The Black Schooner 


— the most wonderful you ever saw — big yel¬ 
low pines eight feet through and all that. He’s 
just beginning to log it. Been holding it for 
the wonderful boom in lumber prices that has 
just arrived. 

“ But that,” Pant put two fingers solemnly 
together, tip to tip, “ that hasn’t got a thing to 
do with the mystery as far as I know. In 
fact nothing has. It’s just a step out into the 
dark. 

“ You see,” he grinned, “this Colonel Rem- 
mington meets me in the lobby of the hotel, 
and he says right away, ‘ You’re the boy they 
call Pant. I’ve heard a lot about you.’ 

“ ‘ Huh/ I grunts, not knowing what else 
to do. 

“‘ Yes, I have/ he insists, as if I’d denied 
it. ‘ I’ve heard how you and Johnny Thompson 
got the best of those Russians when they tried 
to make away with the gold you had mined, 
and how you outwitted the Bolsheviki spies. 
There was some stunt in a circus, too, and this 
last thing — helping that professor save his 


A Strange Commission 9 

priceless medicine from the wreck — and about 
that Dust Eater of yours. That was a great 
invention. I shouldn’t wonder if you’re going 
to need that Dust Eater on your next ad¬ 
venture.’ 

“ ‘ I see you’re a fortune teller,’ I says, smil¬ 
ing right at him. ‘ If you can tell the future 
as well as the past, I’d be obliged to you if 
you’d reel off the next twenty years of my 
life.’ 

“ ‘ I can’t do that,’ he laughs, ‘ but I think 
I can tell you about the next twenty days, or 
even as many as forty. But as far as the past 
is concerned, that’s all been written down. Yes, 
and printed. Half the boys in the country have 
read about your adventures, and the other half 
are going to soon.’ 

“ I stared when the colonel said that. 

“‘You didn’t know it?’ he smiled. ‘Well, 
perhaps that was best. Perhaps I’ve made a 
mistake in telling you now. Many a good 
football game has been spoiled because the play¬ 
ers remembered that the game would be written 


10 


The Black Schooner 


up in the paper next day. Wanted to do some¬ 
thing spectacular, you see, the players did; then 
their names would be in the paper. That made 
monkeys of them and they lost the game. Think 
you can forget that fellow that writes you up, 
if I let you in on this new thing? ’ 

“ ‘ I can tell you better when I know what 
it is/ I grinned back. ‘ I think I might stand 
the shock though. Johnny Thompson and I 
get more fun in hooking a big bass and land¬ 
ing him in the boat than we do in talking about 
it afterward. It's pretty much the same way 
with our adventures.’ 

You’ll think it strange,’ the colonel said, 
sort of hitching his chair up close to mine and 
dropping his voice to a whisper as if he was 
really going to tell me something, ‘ but the 
truth of the matter is, I’m not planning to 
tell you anything about the case in advance. I 

am just going to set you down in a certain spot 

> 

with your eyes and ears open and ask you to 
make a record of the things you hear and see.’ 

Where’s the spot?’ I sort of gasped. 


A Strange Commission 11 

“ ‘Not too far from here/ he flashes back. 
‘Question is, do you take the job? You’ll be 
paid for the information you bring me. If 
you bring me nothing, you get nothing, except 
your board and lodging. If you deliver valu¬ 
able information you will be liberally rewarded. 

“ ‘ You see,’ he went on as I sort of hesi¬ 
tated, ‘ I’m not a boy any more. I’m sixty 
and I’ve been living all the time. Naturally, 
I’ve had other things I’ve wanted to find out. 
I’ve generally managed to find them out, but 
my experience has been that if I told the fellow 
who went after the facts just what he was to 
look for, he kept seeing it every way he turned 
and more than half the time it wasn’t what I 
was looking for at all. 

“ 4 Now this thing I’m looking for up there 
at the mouth of the Katekomb River is a big 
thing and very unusual too. Unless I miss my 
guess, you and that pal of yours, Johnny 
Thompson, will know it when you see it, so 
there’s no use my telling you what to look 
for. In fact, I’d better not tell you; you might 


12 


The Black Schooner 


go blundering right in and spill the beans be¬ 
fore they’re half soaked.’ 

“ Well, Johnny, when he’d told me that 
much,” Pant’s eyes were mere slits by now, 
“ I was awfully interested, for there’s no mys¬ 
tery like a mystery without a tail to it. That’s 
the kind of mystery this one is.” 

“ What did you say to him?” Johnny asked. 

“ I said, ‘ What do you want us to do? ’ and 
here’s his answer: ‘ There’s a sort of shack 
close to the mouth of the Katekomb River. It’s 
well back in the pines where no one will see you 
unless you have a light, and you must not have 
one. I want you and Johnny Thompson to go 
up there and shack it for a while. I’ll give you 
an order on my company store at Wall’s End 
for all the supplies you need. There’s an aban¬ 
doned salmon cannery which belongs to me, 
four miles down the coast in a little, land-locked 
bay. It has a pair of big double doors, open¬ 
ing right out over the water; used to run 
schooners in there to unload them. Since the 
Dust Eater is a seaplane, she ought to run in 


A Strange Commission 13 

there without a bit of trouble. You can tie 
her up there, like a fire engine in its house, 
ready for any emergency. 

“ ‘ You'll find a clinker-built rowboat in there. 
You’d better use that for going to the mouth 
of the river. You can draw it clear up to the 
cabin when you’re not using it. There’s nothing 
tells stories quicker than a boat left on the 
beach. What say? Is it a go?’ 

“ ‘ That depends on Johnny Thompson,’ I 
answered back. ‘ If he’ll come in, I’m for it. 
Looks like a good outing, anyway.’ 

“ ‘ It’ll be that,’ he says. ‘ The river is full 
of fine fish and there’s no harm in your rowing 
about in the river in the daytime. Go as far 
as you like. Night is when you must keep your 
watch on the woods, river and bay.’ 

“ ‘ I’ll wire Johnny,’ I says. 

“ And you did,” smiled Johnny. 

“ I did, and here we are. Are you sorry? ” 

“ Sorry!” Johnny sprang to his feet. 
“ When do we give the Dust Eater her next 
breakfast? ” 


14 


The Black Schooner 


“ To-morrow morning if you say so.” 

“ I say so. Mystery at night and rainbow 
trout in the daytime. Who could ask for more?” 

Johnny sprang forward to drag his partner 
across the floor in a wild Indian war dance. 

“ But this fellow that’s writing us up,” he 
panted as he dropped into a chair. “ I — I sort 
of hope we don’t disappoint him — give him 
something more worth telling.” 

He need not have worried along that line. 
The adventure upon which they were about to 
enter was destined to be well worthy a place 
beside the Panther Eve, the Crimson Flash and 
the White Fire of other days. 


CHAPTER II 


IS THIS THE MYSTERY? 

Two nights later Johnny Thompson found 
himself lying flat on his stomach where a bed 
of pine needles, mosses and decaying ferns gave 
him a soft and silent watching place. Not ten 
feet before him a steep, shelving bank brought 
the forest to an abrupt end. Through a thin 
fringe of ferns which concealed him he could 
catch a glimpse of the onrushing river, while 
the bay into which it flowed, like the inside of 
a horseshoe, lay spread out before him. Noth¬ 
ing of importance could pass out of that river 
without his knowledge and nothing could enter 
the river from the bay. To watch was his task. 
To lie there and wonder just what it might be 
he was watching for was his privilege. And 
wonder he did. 

It was ten o’clock. The moon was just rising. 

15 


16 The Black Schooner 

At a certain spot, like black pearls, a line of dark 
spots lay stretched across the water. 

“ Salmon trap out there,” he told himself. 
“ Sockeye salmon are running. Wonder if 
someone is stealing the salmon from the trap? 
Wonder if we’re hired just as guards to that 
trap? Don’t seem probable. Just any old chap 
could keep such a watch. You can’t tell though. 
You never know what these rich fellows will 
do. They think some of their little affairs are 
mighty important. Look at the money they 
pay dog doctors to see that their favorite 
poodles don’t go to the happy hunting ground.” 

His thoughts strayed to a certain spot in the 
stream where, two hours before, he had seen a 
trout cut a graceful arc out of the sunset-lit bay. 

“ Bet he was a rainbow. Bet he weighed 
twenty pounds. Bet I could get him. And bet 
I will,” he told himself. 

The moon was rising higher. Here and there 
he caught a straight silver line which cut 
squarely across the moonbeams. 

“ Bits of slab,” he told himself. Big saw- 


Is This the Mystery f 17 

mill up there somewhere. I’ll have to row up 
some day and have a look. Wonderful things, 
these Pacific Coast mills, they say. Wonder if 
we’re here to spot some crookedness connected 
with that mill. Wonder — ” 

His wondering was cut short. His eye had 
been arrested in its wanderings by some dark 
object in the river. 

For a half hour he studied it, but with no 
result. 

“Give it up,” he told himself at last. “ Looks 
like there were two others over to the right and 
one to the left. They might be big sawlogs. 
But who would be fool enough to turn ’em loose 
to ride the tide? And how could they possibly 
escape from a boom at this time of year when 
the water’s low and there’s not been a rain for 
a month. Might be — ” 

Again his thoughts were arrested. He looked. 
He stared. He rubbed his eyes to look again. 

Yes, it was true. His eyes had not de¬ 
ceived him. A long, black streak was thrusting 
its way down the river at terrific speed. 


18 


The Black Schooner. 


“ Like a torpedo,” he told himself. “ Forty 
miles an hour, and no sound, no smoke. Just 
like it had been shot from a gun.” 

So low did the thing lie in the water he was 
unable to discover what type of craft it was, 
nor whether indeed it was a craft at all. Now 
he saw it and now it was gone. The darkness 
which hung over the bay had swallowed it. 

“ Oh, glory!” he whispered, propping him¬ 
self up on his elbow. “ Was she beast, bird or 
fish, or was she a craft of some sort? If a 
craft, what kind of power did she use? There 
was no smoke from coal and no noise from a 
gasoline engine. And yet she went at terrific 
speed. 

“Tell you what; I’ll name her and find out 
what she is later. I’ll call her ‘ The Black 
Schooner.’ ” 

Three hours longer with eyes fixed on that 
dark stretch of water he lay there waiting the 
return of the mysterious object. 

At the end of the third hour, he rose and 
stretched himself. 


19 


Is This the Mystery? 

“ Might have been mistaken, ,, he murmured. 
“ Could have been some creature of the sea. 
But only a whale is as big and black as that, 
and what would a whale be doing up there in 
fresh water ?" 

His reflections were cut short by the appear¬ 
ance of Pant. As he came creeping through the 
ferns he whispered: 

“ Twelve o'clock and all's well. ,, 

“ All’s well," Johnny repeated. “ Sit down; 
I want to tell you something." 

Listening attentively to his account of the 
night's happening, Pant now and then gave 
forth a grunted, “ Oh! Ah! " When the tale was 
finished he said with a chuckle, “ Looks like a 
job for one of my old tricks." 

“How’s that?" 

“ Schooner passes in the dark, doesn’t she?" 

“ Sure does." 

“ Then how about the Panther's Eye?" 

“ Grand idea. See in the dark, eh? But can 
you see that far?" 

“ Think I can." 


20 


The Black Schooner 


“ Got — got the — ” Johnny was stumped 
for a way to finish his question. He had known 
Pant in Russia, as you will remember, he had 
known that Pant at that time possessed the 
power of seeing in the dark, but just how he ac¬ 
complished that mysterious feat, he had not 
been told. 

“ Why, yes,” said Pant, sensing his compan¬ 
ion’s embarrassment, “ I can rig her up again. 
It’s absurdly simple when you know how. A 
Swiss watchmaker discovered the trick and 
taught it to me. You know the old saying, 
‘ The hand is quicker than the eye 5 ? Well, so 
is the eyelid. You wear a pair of heavy glasses 
and a cap to conceal your instruments. You 
fix a small but very powerful flashlight behind 
one corner of the right lens of your glasses. 
You connect this with batteries inside your cap. 
You cut in a switch and connect this to a small 
cord as a cut-out You glue one end of this 
cut-out to your left eyelid and you are all set. 
When you suddenly wink your left eye the 
light flashes on for the least fraction of a sec- 


21 


Is This the Mystery? 

ond. You are looking for it and get the full 
benefit of it. You see what you want to see 
in the place you are looking for it. Other per¬ 
sons are not aware that anything is going to 
happen, and because the eyelid is quicker than 
the eye, they see nothing, do not even realize 
that a light has been flashed, no, not even when 
the light falls directly upon them. Great, isn't 
it?” 

“ Great! ” 

“ But simple. All inventions and discoveries 
are simple. Think I can get it going in a day 
or two. Then, if our black friend returns, 
we'll see what we see.” 

“ Perhaps that Black Schooner is hiding the 
secret we're after, the mystery we are to solve.” 

“ Perhaps. But you can't be sure.” 

“ Might be smugglers. Canadian line is only 
a few miles up the coast.” 

“ Might.” 

" Might be bootleggers.” 

“ Might be anything. Only way we can do is 
#o wait and see.” 


CHAPTER III 


THE SPLIT ROCK 

In spite of the fact that he had not crept into 
his blankets until one o’clock, Johnny was up 
and away again before Pant had come in from 
his turn at watching. 

Tossing his cap into the clinker-built row¬ 
boat, he shoved her off and laughed in the face 
of the sun, which was just climbing over the 
fringe of timber. The lure of the woods and 
river was upon him. It had been many months 
since he had enjoyed the out-in-the-open or 
answered the call of still shadows and rippling 
streams. 

The experience they had just embarked upon 
promised to be all that a boy might desire. 
There were mysteries to be attended to at night 
and what red-blooded boy does not love the baf¬ 
fling challenge of a real mystery? In the day- 

22 


23 


The Split Rock 

time there was the call of the rainbow trout, 
the whirr of the pheasant, the long-drawn whis¬ 
tle, the chatter, the cooie-cooie and the hundred 
other challenging calls of creatures of the forest. 

Just at present he was thinking of that rain¬ 
bow trout he had seen flash for a fly the night 
before. Morning is a good time to fish. Who 
knows what a rainbow trout will rise to before 
the sun is high? 

So with a fly glittering at the point of his 
steel rod and with his supple arms bending the 
stout ashen oars, he shot out into the river and 
upstream toward that deep pool where at least 
one speckled beauty rested. 

He had scarcely sent his fly dipping down 
upon the still surface of the pool than, flooie! 
out of the dark waters there came a flash of 
foam, a steel-blue gleam and his reel sang. 

The strike, coming all unexpected as it did, 
caught him unprepared. The reel, entirely out 
of his control, spun around like mad. In vain 
he attempted to regain control of it. Only 
when the entire fifty yards had spun out and 


24 


The Black Schooner 


the rod had been all but torn from his fingers, 
did he succeed in checking this master fish’s 
mad career. 

“ Right for swift water,” he groaned as he 
strove madly to lift his anchor. 

“ Line’s a good one, but it can’t — ” 

Giving up his attempt at the anchor, he 
gripped the handle of the reel and attempted to 
turn it. 

“ Might as well be hooked to a dock,” he 
whispered. 

Then of a sudden his hope rose; the fish had 
swerved. He gained a dozen turns of the reel. 

Now the fish appeared to give in. A good 
twenty yards were added to the gain. 

But sudden as a gleam of light, the trout 
leaped clear of the water; a full four feet he 
flashed. 

“ Man! Oh, man! What a fish!” 

He leaped again, and yet again. The third 
time Johnny’s fingers slipped. The reel was 
slack for an instant; one instant was quite 
enough. The next instant Johnny was quite 


The Split Rock 25 

free to reel in his line at his leisure. The fish 
was gone. 

For a moment, quite speechless, he stood in 
the boat. He was staring at the spot where the 
fish had vanished, as if contemplating a dive 
in pursuit of him. 

“ All right,” he murmured hoarsely, “ all 
right for you. But that’s only the first round. 
This is a twenty round battle and I’m not 
knocked out yet; I’ll not quit until I get a 
decision.” 

After that he reeled in his line, then paddled 
to a point just above the master-trout’s lair. 

“ I thought so,” he murmured, as if speaking 
to the fish. “ You’ve got a cozy home down 
there with a shady porch to it, a big boulder in 
fifteen feet of water. That’s the kind of place 
a retired champion like you usually chooses 
for a home. And the rock’s split, split from end 
to end; a two foot crevice, I’ll be bound. Extra 
fancy, I’d say. 

“ All right, old fellow, I know you’re not con¬ 
nected in any way with the mystery we’ve been 


26 


The Black Schooner 


hired to unravel, but all the same Fm going to 
lay for you. And I’ll get you. I’ll get you.” 
Whereupon he dipped his oars in the water 
and continued his journey upstream. 

Strange as it might seem, Johnny’s remark 
about the master-trout and his split rock home 
not being connected with the big mystery was 
not quite true. They were destined to be con¬ 
nected with it in a very real way, as you shall 
see later on. 

For the present Johnny was headed upstream. 
He was bent upon a day of pleasure on the 
river. If the distance did not prove too great 
nor the current too strong, he meant to have a 
look at the sawmill up the river. 



CHAPTER IV 

A MYSTERIOUS LITTLE 
BROWN SQUIRREL 

Johnny’s rod and reel netted him two trout 
that morning, rainbows both of them, the first 
weighed three pounds and the second, five. 

He fished only when he had grown weary of 
rowing. At noon he dragged his boat up on 
an inviting bank and, having dressed his small¬ 
est fish, cut it in long strips. These he lashed 
to a broad bit of slab-wood. Having set this 
slab on end he built a fire before it and ere long 
was enjoying a feast fit for a king: planked 
trout. 

It was just as he was devouring the last mor¬ 
sel that he heard strange sounds back in the 
forest. Every now and again something 

bounded down upon the leaves with a thud that 

27 


28 


The Black Schooner 


was greater than would be made by a squirrel 
or any other small creature he knew of. 

“ Might be a deer,” he told himself in a 
whisper. 

He found himself creeping away from the 
river and into the timber. From time to time 
he paused to listen. Twice more he heard the 
sound, then all was silence. Still he crept on, 
“ for,” he told himself, “ the creature, what¬ 
ever it is, may have lain down to rest, and I 
might get a sight of him yet.” 

His guess was correct; the creature had 
come to rest. However, it was such a creature 
as he had not dreamed of. 

Having crept forward a full hundred yards 
without catching another sound, he at last gave 
up the quest to throw himself flat upon his back. 
There, half buried in a soft bed of pine needles, 
staring up at a fallen giant of the forest which 
at an angle of fifteen degrees lay propped upon 
its branches above him, he had all but fallen 
asleep, when of a sudden some object struck 
with a dull thud upon his chest. 


A Mysterious Brown Squirrel 29 

Doubling up with the speed of a new jack¬ 
knife, he stared all about him, then up at the 
tree. A chance glance at his side showed him 
a green pine cone. 

“ Huh! ” he grunted. “ Probably a squirrel 
dropped it.” 

Again he settled back for his after-dinner 
nap. Again he had all but drifted into dream¬ 
land when a ruder shock brought him to a 
sitting position. This time a cone had landed 
squarely on his nose. At the same time he was 
conscious of having heard a strange hissing 
noise which turned rapidly into a gurgle. 

“ That,” he told himself, “ is a little too 
much.” 

However, he told it to himself in a whisper. 
As far as outward appearance went, he was 
quite calm. He settled back on his bed of pine 
needles as if nothing had happened and appar¬ 
ently closed his eyes. 

They were not quite shut. He could see all 
that went on above him. He was resolved to 
get even with those squirrels. Just how he was 


30 The Black Schooner 

to do it he did not know, but first he must see 
them. 

Imagine his utter astonishment at seeing, 
three minutes later, a wealth of brown hair, a 
fine white forehead and a pair of hazel eyes 
move out from over the edge of the giant's 
trunk. 

Startled, he gripped his muscles to hold them 
quiet. 

“ A girl," he whispered, yet his lips did not 
move. 

He next saw a very small, very well propor¬ 
tioned hand come out to the right of the face. 
In it was a pine cone. For a second it poised 
above him. Then the cone dropped. 

That instant he was on his feet. 

“ Ah-ha! I caught you," he shouted. 

There followed a little muffled scream. The 
next instant he was looking at only the fallen 
yellow pine tree. 

“Aw! C’m’on down," he coaxed after a 
moment’s watching. Cm’on down, little squir¬ 
rel, I’ll forgive you." 


31 


A Mysterious Broum Squirrel 

After five minutes of coaxing, he saw the 
child, for she was little more than that, a girl 
of sixteen and very slightly built, step out among 
the branches of the fallen tree. She was fairly 
thirty feet above him. Dressed as she was in 
a brown waist and brown corduroy knickers, 
she resembled a brown squirrel among the 
green branches. 

“ Truly will you be good to me?” she 
wavered. 

“ Truly.” 

“ Well — ” 

“ Where do you belong, little brown 
squirrel? ” 

“ My father’s boss at the big mill up yonder.” 
Her hand pointed up the river. “ Sometimes I 
come down to this valley of giants to think. 
’Tain’t the real Valley of Giants, of course. I 
read about the Valley of Giants in a book but 
I love to call them that and to come here to 
think. Not very happy thoughts to-day, though 
— thoughts about my dad.” 

Johnny’s eye swept the forest about him. 


32 


The Black Schooner 


Truly it was a wonderful sight From this 
ridge not a tree had been cut. Yellow pines 
and fir trees, six and eight feet thick and tower¬ 
ing a hundred and fifty feet above him, stood 
like giant guards of the river which gleamed 
in the distance. 

“ They are truly wonderful,” he murmured. 
“ But say, little brown squirrel, how do you go 
to that mill of your father's?” 

“ Do you want to go there? ” 

“ Very much. I never saw one. I was go¬ 
ing up the river.” 

“Oh, the river? You'd never make it that 
way. River's too crooked. There’s a short 
way through the forest. I — I'll show you.” 

Johnny grinned his delight. 

“Oh, will you? That — why — that will be 
darby!” 

Light as a real squirrel, the girl came tripping 
down the tree-trunk. 

Johnny gave her his hand for the final leap 
to the ground and together they laughed as if 
they had been friends for a lifetime. 


A Mysterious Brown Squirrel 33 

“ Fll have to make sure my boat’s safely 
aground/' he said with a smile. 

“ I’ll help you drag it up,” she laughed, and 
together they raced away through the ferns to 
the brink of the river. 


CHAPTER V 


A TREE-TOP LOOKOUT 

Johnny Thompson was far from being one 
of those unfortunate beings known as a “ladies’ 
man.” You will know that if you have read 
the other books of this series. A splendid 
swimmer, a hiker with a long-distance record, 
a hard worker, a thorough student and a cham¬ 
pion lightweight boxer, he was the type of boy 
that our country has needed and always will 
need. Yet he was not the sort of fellow who 
would ignore a girl. 

Truth is, the girl he was now with was not 
the kind of girl that any real fellow would 
want to neglect. With face and arms browned 
by the sun, with every muscle alert as a clock 
spring, she inspired Johnny at once with the 
thought, “ She’d make a wonderful chum.” 

When the boat had been drawn high on the 

34 


35 


A Tree-top Lookout 

river’s bank, she led him straight away through 
the forest. The trail was not blazed, yet she 
hesitated not for a moment, 

“ Knows it like a book,” he whispered to him¬ 
self in admiration. 

Stooping a bit forward, her shoulders drooped 
her arms hanging loose and free, her feet mak¬ 
ing long rapid pit-pats, she led on like a pro¬ 
fessional woodsman. As he followed in silence 
Johnny’s fancy set him dreaming. In the dream 
he saw himself not a white boy but an Indian, 
and this brown girl before him was his mate. 
They were alone in a vast wilderness. The boat 
on the bank of the stream was a birch-bark 
canoe, the fish he had caught that morning 
their only food. When night came they would 
erect a shelter of pine boughs and sleep on a 
bed of dry ferns and pine needles. For the 
moment they were going forward on a recon- 
noitering expedition to discover if possible the 
camp of the nearest rival hunters. 

“ Watch out.” The girl’s words shattered his 
dream. “ You have to cross this stream on this 


36 


The Black Schooner 


fallen tree-trunk. If you don’t mind your step 
you’ll fall in. Give me your hand.” 

Johnny gripped her solid little palm and to¬ 
gether in silence they crossed the stream which, 
gurgling over rocks and half-decayed tree- 
trunks, made its way to the river. 

“ Fish in there, I’ll bet,” he suggested. 

“ Lots of them. Brook trout. Do you like to 
fish?” 

“You bet.” 

“ Sometime I’ll show you where the best holes 
are.” 

“ Thanks, little squirrel. That will be fine. 
What’s your name, little squirrel ? ” 

“ Nelsie — Nelsie Andrews.” 

“ That’s a fine name; little bit of Nellie, little 
of Elsie. Mine’s Johnny.” 

“ Thanks, Johnny.” 

“ What’s this you tell me about being worried 
about your father, Nelsie? Does he drink too 
much ? ” 

“ Of course not,” she turned to face him, a 
glint of anger in her eye. 


37 


A Tree-top Lookout 

“ Oh! ” he said, “ Excuse me. A lot of lum¬ 
bering people do drink too much, you know.” 

“ But not bosses of big mills,” she smiled 
forgivingly. 

“ I suppose I oughtn’t to tell you,” she went 
on after a moment, “ but I guess you’re all right. 
You see, my father’s afraid he’ll lose his job. 
The mill isn’t making any money, and it ought 
to. The people that own it say there is a leak 
somewhere. They can’t find out where it is and 
they blame my father for it. They think fie is 
wasting lumber, letting good timber go over into 
the scrap pile or something. But he isn’t. He’s 
awful careful and he knows his business. In¬ 
deed he does. He’s been a sawmill boss for 
twenty years. So you see it would be awful 
hard if he lost his job now.” 

“ I see,” said Johnny thoughtfully. 

Then a sudden inspiration seized him. 

“ By hemlock! ” he exclaimed, “ that must be 
why we were sent — ” 

He did not finish. A sense of caution had 
crept over him. When one goes out solving 


38 


The Black Schooner 


mysteries, he does not begin by telling every¬ 
one he meets about it, 

“ What must be? ” she asked quickly. 

He did not answer her question. 

“ Do you happen to know whether or not a 
rich man by the name of Remmington holds an 
interest in your mill? ” he asked. 

“ Yes, I think I have heard my father speak 
of him.” 

“ Then perhaps that explains — ” 

“ Explains what?” 

“ I can't tell you just now, little brown squir¬ 
rel. Sometime I will. All I can say now is 
that I'm going to help your father if I can.” 

She turned and flashed him a smile. Then 
again they tramped on in silence. 

The forest was still as a cave. Here a tiny 
bird flitted noiselessly from twig to twig, there 
a huge butterfly drifted across their path. 
Other than these, everything was still. Even 
their own footsteps over the heavy carpet of 
nature made no sound. Again Johnny took 
up his dream of an Indian youth and his mate. 


A Tree-top Lookout 39 

“ Did you say you just wanted to see the mill, 
not go through it?” the girl asked. 

“ I wouldn’t have time to go through it,” he 
said. 

“ You can see it from up there. It — It's 
wonderful! ” She pointed to the top of a giant 
fir tree which, towering above its fellows, ap¬ 
peared to reach to the very dome of the sky. 

“ Yes, I suppose so,” he smiled. “ And it 
jvould be especially wonderful from the moon.” 

“ But I’m not joking.” 

She led him around the tree, to point out a 
rustic ladder fastened to the tree-trunk. The 
ladder reached up to the first limb, some forty 
feet above. 

“ It’s my lookout,” she explained. 

u Did you put that ladder up there? ” 

u Sure. A little piece at a time.” 

"And do you dare climb it?” 

For answer she sprang away up the tree- 
trunk. 

“ C’m’on,” she trilled, tossing a look of dar¬ 
ing back at him. 


*40 


The Black Schooner 


Johnny was twice her weight. He knew what 
a fall might mean, yet he could not refuse the 
dare of a girl. 

Putting out his right hand, he gripped the 
side of the ladder and began to climb. 

It was with a distinct sense of relief that he 
at last dragged himself to the sitting position 
on the first limb of the tree. 

The girl was seated on the second limb, smil¬ 
ing back at him. As he looked he could not 
help but think how well knickers suited her. 
Her muscles were as hard as his own; the 
tight knit fingers and her solid little cheeks 
showed that. 

“ Made for the woods and the tree-tops as 
the squirrel is,” he told himself. 

“ All right,” he smiled after he had regained 
his breath. “I don’t see any mill from here; 
only the tops of trees. Where do we go from 
here?” 

“ Up,” she breathed, twisting herself into a 
standing position and gripping the limb above 
her. 


CHAPTER VI 


ATOP THE WORLD 

After Johnny left him at midnight, Pant sat 
for a long time thinking and looking away at 
the bay. He was wondering whether the black 
streak which Johnny had seen passing across 
the water could, after all, have anything to do 
with the mystery they had been set to solve. 

“ If it has,” he told himself, “ and it is truly 
a black schooner, then that Panther Eye trick 
of mine will come in handy. Crimson Flash and 
the White Fire might turn a trick or two also, 
but that’s not so probable. One uses them when 
he is in danger, not when he is tracking some¬ 
one in the dark. Til have to drop round at 
the old fish-house and see what I can find in 
the locker of the Dust Eater.” 

The Dust Eater, you will remember from 

41 


42 


The Black Schooner 


reading the book, “White Fire,” was a sea¬ 
plane with a marvelous motor, a motor which 
used coal dust for fuel instead of gasoline. 

“ It will take two powerful lenses for the 
lamp,” Pant went on thinking to himself. 
“ Have to have some special high power bat¬ 
teries and a mess of fine wire. Guess I'll find 
it all on the Dust Eater. I may have to con¬ 
nect small batteries in a series to get the power, 
but I can wear them on my belt. No need to 
carry them in your cap in a case like this.” 

He had thought all these things through and 
was experiencing great difficulty in keeping 
awake, when of a sudden he sat up straight 
and stared. A vision of white foam was driv¬ 
ing in from the sea. Hardly had he concluded 
that it was some rich man’s racing motor boat 
than he noted that no sound came up to him 
from it. 

“ Silent as the night,” fie murmured, “ The 
Black Schooner.” 

Hardly had he whispered the words, when 
the thing veered sharply to the right, revealing 


i 


Atop the World 43 

a dark oblong shape, then shot straight up the 
riven 

“ That’s her! ” he murmured excitedly. 
“ Wonder what she is and where she’s been. 
Wonder what her name is and whom she be¬ 
longs to. Must have a nest up the river there 
somewhere. I might find her if I took a trip 
up there in the daytime. Might not, too. A 
thousand rocky coves up there probably; the 
mouth of some little stream would be a safe 
hiding place for her. The thing to do is to fig 
up old Panther Eye and just lie here and watch. 
I’ll go up to the Dust Eater for the parts as 
soon as I’ve had breakfast and ten winks.” 

Pant would have been much surprised had 
he been told that he would, later in the day, 
discover at least one of the places the Black 

Schooner had visited that night. 

******** 

The feats of Tarzan were mere child’s play 
when compared to the gymnastics performed 
by Johnny Thompson in climbing the remaining 
seventy-five feet of that giant fir tree. Time 


44 


The Black Schooner. 


and again, in some dizzy corner with the next 
safe branch far above him, he was tempted to 
admit himself defeated. Yet the fact that the 
squirrel-like creature, that girl, was above him 
and still climbing, spurred him on. 

“ Can’t be beaten by a girl,” he mumbled, as 
he set his teeth hard and, reaching for the limb 
above him, pulled himself by sheer strength of 
arm toward the next position. 

Blessing the father who had trained him in 
ways of keeping fit, thankful for every hard 
muscle, every supple joint in his body, he 
struggled ever upward until at last with a sigh 
of relief he dropped into a crow’s nest seat. 
Woven by the girl out of limber branches and 
hung from two limbs, this seat offered scant 
room for two, but for them it had to suffice. 

“Hard?” she smiled. 

“A little — no, a lot,” Johnny frankly ad¬ 
mitted. 

“ New things are always hard. It will be 
easy after awhile.” 

“You think I’m going to do this often?” 


45 


Atop the World 

“ You can’t tell. I do. It’s grand. Listen.” 

For the first time Johnny was conscious of 
a medley of strange sounds drifting up to him 
from somewhere. It was strangely musical, 
yet one could scarcely think how such music 
might be made. He had once been connected 
with a circus, as you will remember in the days 
of Crimson Flash, and the circus had a steam 
calliope. This was like that, only different. 

“ What is it?” he breathed. 

“ It’s what Dad calls the song of the saws.” 

“The song of the saws?” 

“Yes, all of the saws singing together. He 
says it’s like a selection played by a great 
orchestra. Can’t you hear the parts? That 
thundering sound comes from the big band 
saws. They’re the bassos. There are trom¬ 
bones and cornets, too — the small crosscut saws 
and the planers. The tongue-groovers and 
moulders are the trap drums. You don’t get 
them all, I suppose, for you haven’t heard the 
saws all your life as I have. 

“ And see! ” she cried suddenly, putting out 


46 


The Black Schooner 


her hands and parting the branches as she 
might have a curtain. ft See! There’s the 
picture.” 

For a full five minutes Johnny sat there 
silently studying the scene that was spread out 
before him. It was as if he were seeing a 
moving picture thrown upon a huge screen. In 
the foreground were groups of sun-browned 
houses, homes of the mill hands. Flitting back 
and forth among these were, like white dots, 
the women and children. In the background 
were many long, low sheds and behind these 
a pond filled with great logs. The sheds were 
the mill; the pond, which was but a bit of still 
back-water of the river, walled in on one side 
by a log-boom, was the millpond. Thick as 
bees about a hive, men worked about this mill. 
Every now and again a log rose as if by magic 
from the pond and moved into the mill. 

“ It’s like a child’s play-world,” he mur¬ 
mured at last. 

“ It’s a long way off and we are very high 
up,” she smiled, much pleased by the spell her 


Atop the World 47 

magic music and her picture had woven about 
him. 

“ But supposing/’ he said thoughtfully, “ sup¬ 
pose this tree should be suddenly uprooted as 
that one was which you were sitting on a short 
time ago? And supposing we were up here at' 
the time? What then?” 

“ Oh! ” she laughed, “ that one fell during 
a terrific gale. If there was a gale, we wouldn’t 
be here. See, there isn’t a cloud in the sky.” 

All the same, almost in spite of himself, 
Johnny found himself studying through the 
possible actions of one who found himself a 
hundred and fifty feet in air atop a tree which 
was trembling for a fall. 

“I wonder if it would work?” he asked 
himself. 

He was thinking of a time when as a small 
boy he had climbed with his cousin to the upper 
branches of willow trees that were being felled 
by his uncle, and had ridden down upon the 
branches on the upper side of the tree. 

“That was only twenty feet,” he told him- 


48 


The Black Schooner 


self, “ and this is nearly a hundred and fifty. 
Yet I believe it might be done. ,, 

This thinking things through for a possible 
emergency was a valuable trait of Johnny’s 
mind. It had saved him from disaster more 
than once and was destined to in this case. But 
that is another part of our story. 

Johnny was astonished at the time that had 
passed when he at last looked at his watch. 

“ Five o’clock,” he exclaimed. “ I must 
hurry back.” 

After a hasty scurrying down the tree they 
shook hands. Johnny pledged himself to help 
her all he could in solving her father’s problem; 
she promised him an opportunity to see the mill 
close up in the very near future; then each 
hurried on the way home. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE MARK OF THE BLACK SCHOONER 

In the meantime, Pant had not been idle. 
By taking a winding trail across the point and 
down the beach, he could reach the little harbor 
and the abandoned salmon fishery where the 
Dust Eater had been stored. After an early 
lunch he took this trail and, two hours later, 
found himself before the door of the fish-house. 
This door opened out upon the dock. The pad¬ 
lock was turned with the keyhole against the 
wall. He was about to flop it over when he 
suddenly uttered a low whistle of surprise. 

“Somebody’s been foolin’ with that lock,” 
he muttered. “ Had it off, too. Must have a 
key. I left it with the keyhole side out and now 
it’s just the opposite.” 

Hastily unlocking the door, he peered within. 
Everything was apparently just as he had left 

49 


50 


The Black Schooner 


it. The Dust Eater was rising and falling with 
the gentle wash of water; the place was as 
fishy and as silent as ever. 

“ It’ll pay me to look it over carefully,” he 
told himself. 

He did look it over carefully, but found noth¬ 
ing disturbed or missing. 

After stuffing his pockets with lenses, small 
batteries and wires, he stepped once more into 
the sunlight, closed the door gently and snapped 
on the lock. 

“ Wonder if that fellow was a land-prowler, 
or did he come from the sea.” He walked to 
the land end of the dock. There he examined 
the soft earth for footprints. 

“ Nothing here,” he told himself. Then he 
retraced his steps. Coming once more to 'the 
seaward end of the dock, he began walking 
along its edge, examining every plank and pile 
as he went. 

“ Ah-ha! ” he exclaimed suddenly, “ I thought 
as much. Some sort of schooner or tug. No 
row boat.” 


The Mark of the Black Schooner 51 

What he had discovered was a whitish circle 
about one of the age-browned piles. He began 
a careful examination. 

“ She’s been tied up here,” he told himself. 
“ Ought to find something more.” 

Presently he did. Stooping down, he ex¬ 
amined the edge of the dock. At first he dis¬ 
covered nothing, but at length his search was 
rewarded. Scraping the edge of a plank with 
his knife he brought away a dark substance 
which was not decay. 

“ Paint,” he murmured. “ Rubbed it off as 
she chafed the side of the dock. Real paint 
it is too, a sort of hard and crusty enamel, not 
the coal tar stuff used on tug-boats. This one’s 
a real schooner. And by the Great Horn Spoon 
I’ll wager she was no less a craft than our old 
friend the Black Schooner. 

“ So that chap’s doing a little detective work 
of his own,” he murmured thoughtfully. “ All 
right, old chap, welcome to our city. We’ll 
see who’ll be the first to get something on the 
other.” 


52 


The Black Schooner 


With this challenge thrown to the wind, he 
turned and hurried toward his cabin. 

That night as Johnny Thompson lay in his 
patch of ferns by the river’s high bank, he saw 
the black streak once more emerge from the 
river. 

“ Here she comes,” he murmured. “ I only 
wish Pant had that ‘ see-by-night ’ affair of his 
rigged up. But what’s this?” he exclaimed 
suddenly. “ She’s slowing down, going to 
stop. I may get a good look at her yet. 

“ No such luck,” he whispered a moment 
later; “ she’s going to anchor up the stream, 
just about where my big spotted beauty is 
waving his fins and smiling a fishy smile over 
the way he fooled me a few hours ago.” 

As he watched the mysterious craft, he saw 
her circle about as if seeking a safe landing 
place. 

“ Going ashore for something,” he told him¬ 
self. 

Much to his surprise, the schooner, after 
making six complete circles, did not put her 


The Mark of the Black Schooner 53 

prow upon the shore. Instead she came to rest 
several yards from the bank. 

“ Probably doesn’t care to risk a landing. 
May have a dory,” he told himself. 

At that point he resolved upon a bold stroke; 
he would leave his point of watching. By 
skulking along up the river bank he would be 
able to come quite close to the schooner. He 
would be able to form a better idea of what 
sort of craft this was which traveled like a mad 
racer and without either smoke or noise. 

The brush and fallen timber was thick along 
the shore. He was obliged to move with ut¬ 
most caution. Here he trusted his weight to 
a fallen tree-trunk, only to have it cave in 
with him like a huge mushroom. Here he at¬ 
tempted to bend a limb aside and found it firm 
as steel. Here a twig snapped like a gun, 
leaving him to listen breathlessly. 

“ If I’m lucky,” he told himself, “ I might 
even get a glimpse of the person who runs 
that wild craft.” 

Coming at length to a series of rugged boul- 


54 


The Black Schooner 


ders he began moving forward with a series 
of short scrambles upward and slides down¬ 
ward. 

“ Not more than a hundred rods,” he told 
himself hopefully. 

Fifty yards more he fought his way for¬ 
ward. Then of a sudden a loose rock rattled 
down before him. 

“ Rotten luck,” he mumbled, then resolved to 
make a dash for it. 

Still he had heard no sound. Making a 
straight break for the bank, he at last put out 
a trembling hand to part the aspens which 
lined the shore. The schooner had surely not 
had time to escape. He would at least catch 
a close-up glimpse of her. 

“ Well, I’ll be — ” he murmured as his gaze 
swept the river. 

The schooner had vanished! Not even at 
the remotest corners of the river was she to be 
sighted. 

“Well!” he breathed, seating himself and 
mopping his brow. “ Must be a submarine! ” 


The Mark of the Black Schooner 55 

“ And/’ he said slowly, after a moment’s 
thought, “ why not?” 

Five minutes later he rose and, having drawn 
a small flashlight from his pocket, examined 
every inch of the bank for a distance of a hun¬ 
dred yards. 

“ No dory’s been beached anywhere here,” 
he told himself. “ I wonder what they wanted? 
What could they have been circling for if not 
for a safe landing? Looks mighty queer to me.” 

With that he made his way back to his 
mossy-seated watching post, to sit and specu¬ 
late upon the events of the day and of the 
night. 

“ Enough excitement to keep the moss from 
gathering above your ears,” he told himself. 
“ Wonder what’s next.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE SPLIT ROCK MYSTERY 

Next day Pant went fishing with Johnny. 

“ I can finish my ‘ see-in-the-dark ’ equip¬ 
ment this afternoon. That baby trout you 
brought in yesterday tastes like more. I don’t 
believe you know how to handle a real fish,” 
he grinned. “ Now when I was down in the 
Gulf Stream I — ” 

“ Yes I know,” Johnny broke in. “ You 
were fishing for three hundred pound swordfish 
and only caught a half-ton shark. All right, 
come along, old sport. If that old rainbow 
doesn’t bump your eyes when you hook him I 
miss my guess.” 

But Pant did not hook him that day. 
Neither did Johnny. If the old master-fish 
were still in that hole, he had learned his lesson 


56 


The Split Rock Mystery 57 

well He rose not once during a full hour of 
fly-casting. 

“ Don’t believe there’s a fish down there,” 
exclaimed Pant, throwing his rod down in dis¬ 
gust 

“ Yes there is,” insisted Johnny. “Tell you 
what I’d like to do. It won’t help the present 
situation any but will improve opportunities for 
the future.” 

“ What’s that? ” 

“ I’d like to dive down there and see what 
kind of a hiding-place that rock is. Almost 
every submerged rock has a pocket somewhere 
beneath it. That’s where the game fish hide. 
Question is, just where is that pocket located? 
If I knew that, I’d step over here some morn¬ 
ing and silently drop a good-sized live minnow 
right down in front of his nose and in a minute 
I bet he’d take it just like that.” 

" Chances are good,” Pant smiled. “ Water’s 
cold enough to produce a thrill. There’s no 
one about, so just strip off and hop to ft.” 

No sooner said than done. A moment later, 


58 The Black Schooner. 

Johnny’s body shot up and out in a graceful 
curve and the next second he was at the bottom 
of the pool. 

One look and the sights that met his eye 
caused three large bubbles to escape from his 
lips and rise toward the top. 

Johnny followed the bubbles. 

“ He — he’s there,” he puffed as he gripped 
the side of the boat to clamber in. 

“ Man, oh, man, he’s a beauty! Twenty-five 
pounds if an ounce. He shot out of his hole 
and away like a flash when he saw me. But 
he’ll come back. He’ll come back and I’ll get 
him yet.” 

After Johnny had rubbed down and dressed, 
even while he was rowing back toward camp 
there was a look of surprise, animation and mys¬ 
tery in his eyes such as a mere fish, even a 
master of the rainbow tribe, could not inspire. 
He said nothing further at the time regarding 
what he had seen at the bottom of the pool and 
since Pant was occupied with thoughts of put¬ 
ting his “ see-by-night ” together, he did not 


59 


The Split Rock Mystery 

notice anything unusual. Nothing further was 
said about it. They cooked and ate their sup¬ 
per in silence. 

“ No use getting out too early,” said Johnny 
as he wiped the last dish and stowed it away 
in the little box cupboard in the corner. “ I’m 
going to sit and think for an hour or two. Do 
you know, Pant, I believe that’s where a lot of 
people lose out in life. They never take time, 
to sit and think and dream, to let the little 
shuttles of their brain drop, click-click, back into 
their proper places. They never listen to the 
whispers of the night. They just rush from this 
thing to that, from work to movies, from 
movies to jazz, and that’s the way they live. By 
and by they wake up to find some fellow who’s 
spent an hour or two each day, apparently just 
dreaming, has forged way ahead of them in* 
the race.” 

“ Well you just go ahead with your dream¬ 
ing,” laughed Pant. “ I’ve got some work to 
do. Got to get my ‘ see-by-night ’ going.” 

“ By the way,” exclaimed Johnny suddenly, 


60 The Black Schooner 

“ have you enough stuff for two of those out¬ 
fits?” 

“ Yes, I guess so. Why? ” 

“ Mind making one for me?” 

“ Why — no — ” Pant hesitated. 

“ Sort of hate to turn your tricks over to 
someone else?” smiled Johnny. 

“ It’s not that,” Pant shook his head. “ But 
you see, you almost need a special pair of eyes 
to make it work successfully. Your eyelids 
have to be of the stop-watch variety. You've 
got to have perfect control of them. If you 
don't you may come to grief, especially when 
you're operating at close range.” 

“ Well,” said Johnny, “ I’m not thinking of 
operating at close range at present. The thing 
I hoped to investigate will be half a mile away 
and a hundred and fifty feet below me. 

“ Going ballooning? ” 

“ Not quite.” Johnny smiled at his friend 
but offered no explanation. 

“All right, I'll fix you up one, but don't 
blame me if it doesn't give perfect satisfaction. 


The Split Rock Mystery 61 

This business of electrical tricks has become a 
sort of art with me.” 

Pant turned to his wires, lenses and batteries, 
while Johnny with his chair tilted against a 
fir post to the porch sat staring into the night. 

The room in which he sat was more a porch 
than a room. With a good roof and floor of 
boards, it was walled in with canvas and mos¬ 
quito netting. 

As he sat there he could see a short way into 
the forest. All beyond was dark, silent, mys¬ 
terious. The cool, damp smell of the forest 
came to him with every faintest breath of wind. 
It brought back to his memory the trail through 
the forest, the trail with the girl springing along 
before him, and then the giant fir tree. 

“ Some girl! ” he whispered to himself. “ I 
must try to help her solve her problem. The 
‘ see-by-night’ and the big fir tree may turn 
the trick. Things that go wrong, go wrong 
at night. That’s the time to be on the watch. 
I’ll suggest it to her. Of course, I’ll have to 
go with her. No, I believe I’ll go out there 


62 


The Black Schooner 


alone and try the thing first. If I could find 
the tree. But of course I couldn’t/’ 

He recalled the dark objects he had seen 
floating down the river at night, the things he 
had taken for saw logs. 

“ Bet I can help her,” he breathed. “ And 
I sure will try.” 

Then his mind was caught by another mem¬ 
ory, a memory of an occurrence so near to the 
present that it could scarcely be called a 
memory. 

“ Pant,” he whispered suddenly, as if afraid 
there were spies lurking out there in the 
shadows, “ I saw something besides the fish 
when I took that dive down to the split rock 
this afternoon.” 

“ What?” 

“ You won’t believe me.” 

^ I’ll trv.” 

“ I saw a small iron safe lodged in the crack 
of the split rock.” 

“ What!” Pant straightened up with a jerk. 
“ Sure it wasn’t just a square rock? ” 


63 


The Split Rock Mystery 

“ Perfectly sure. Saw the hinges, knob and 
everything. The water was so clear and I was 
so close I could have read the figures on the 
dial.” 

“Huh!” Pant grunted. “That’s queer. 
What do you think — ” 

“ I think we’re going to get block and tackle 
and pull that safe out of there — after I’ve 
caught that fish. Guess the secret will keep 
that long.” 

“ Guess so,” grinned Pant. “ But I’ll say 
you’re some fishin’ bug. Just think what may 
be in that safe. It’s been stolen, likely. May 
have a million dollars in it. Who knows? 
May be a big reward offered for its return.” 

“ All right,” said Johnny. “ Give me just 
to-morrow morning. If I don’t get Mr. Fish, 
we’ll go after the safe.” 

“ It may be a trifle dangerous,” suggested 
Pant. “ Fellow who put it there may be lurk¬ 
ing in the woods with an army rifle or two 
leaning against a stump.” 

“ Might. I don’t think so though. It’s a 


64 


The Black Schooner 


pretty slick hiding-place. If it hadn’t been for 
my diving down there it wouldn’t have been 
found in a thousand years. Looked at through 
the water, it is just like a section of rock 
wedged into the crack.” 

Again there was silence. Again Johnny sat 
staring into the dark. Ten minutes passed. 
Johnny started violently. A thought had come 
to him out of the dark. It was associated with 
the circling of the Black Schooner over his 
fishing-hole and with the safe down there in the 
split rock, but this time he did not trouble to 
confide his thoughts to his companion. 


CHAPTER IX 

A MAGNIFICENT BATTLE 

I 

There is a thrill that comes with the drop¬ 
ping of a minnow into a deep pool where a 
finny king resides in his rocky castle, a thrill 
unlike anything else in life. Johnny Thompson 
felt such a thrill as he watched his minnow 
disappear from sight just over the spot where 
the great rainbow trout was hiding. Morning 
had come and he was to have his try at the 
big fish. 

“ It’s this morning or never/’ he whispered. 
“ If we go after that safe we’re sure to stir 
things up so badly that he’ll seek another hiding- 
place. Little old minnow, do your best.” 

Slowly, slowly his line sank to the bottom. 
From time to time there came a faint tug at 
it which took away a foot of line. 


65 


66 


The Black Schooner 


“ Only the minnow,” he breathed, as each 
time his hand involuntarily tightened on the 
pole. 

Johnny was born for action. Watchful wait¬ 
ing was not part of his nature. When the 
minnow had been down for two minutes, he 
began reeling in for another cast. He was 
carelessly winding in the line, asking himself 
questions about that safe at the bottom of the 
pool, when all of a sudden he was shocked into 
action. 

Something had happened to his line. It was 
as if that safe had been tied to it and then 
cast into the river. He knew by instinct rather 
than thought that the magnificent trout had 
struck, had struck hard', that he had him solidly 
hooked and that there was to be such a fight 
as he had never before experienced. 

Fortunately his line was a splendid one of 
braided silk. He used no leader. His hook 
was strong. 

Gripping his rod and bracing himself, he 
closed one hand solidly over the reel. All but 


A Magnificent Battle 67 

boring a hole into the center of his palm, it 
continued to roll. 

He gripped it as only Johnny Thompson 
could. The fish felt the crush and strain of it. 
The strain told on him. Still the reel turned. 

Suddenly, after a hundred yards had played 
out, the quarry turned. The line went slack. 

“ Now,” breathed Johnny. Seizing the han¬ 
dle, he turned with all the speed his nimble 
fingers possessed. 

Half the line had been reeled in when the 
fish, leaping high in air, attempted to cast the 
hook from his mouth. 

“ Can’t be done,” exulted the boy as he felt 
again a terrific tug. 

This time, by gripping his reel hard, he gave 
line slowly. At the same time, with his right 
hand he lifted his anchor. 

Instantly the light, clinker-built rowboat shot 
out amidstream. 

“ Now for a ride,” he breathed. “ Now I’ve 
got a better chance? not so much danger of a 
broken line. Ah, old boy, I’ll get you yet! ” 


68 The Black Schooner 

The fish had chosen to fight his way straight 
upstream. 

“ Can’t let him do that; he’ll break the line,” 
Johnny breathed. 

Thrusting his pole between his knees and 
clamping down hard on the reel, he seized the 
oars, prepared to assist the fish in his upstream 
journey. 

Rowing just enough to keep an even strain 
on the line, he passed the jagged rocks by the 
left bank, he cleared the tangled mass of drift¬ 
wood at the right, then swung clear to the mid¬ 
dle of the stream. 

Led forward by his strange guide, he had 
made a hundred rods or more when the trout, 
worn and irritated by the strain, suddenly 
changed his tactics. Swerving suddenly to the 
right, he made straight toward the left bank 
where was a rocky shore overhung with 
branches. 

“ ’Twon’t do,” Johnny panted, as he swerved 
his boat and attempted to arrest the fish in his 
mad course. 


A Magnificent Battle 69 

It was no use. The line was too long; the 
distance ashore too short. Suddenly a stout, 
overhanging branch shot sharply downward to 
dip and dip again in the dark blue water. 

“ He’s circled that branch and tangled the 
line on it. Now I’ll lose him,” he groaned. 

Seizing his rod he began to draw himself 
toward shore. Much to his surprise at this 
moment, he heard a girlish: “ Hello there! 
What you doing?” 

“ Oh! Nelsie. Good for you! ” he shouted 
back. “ Fishin’. Got a whale. He’s tangled 
on that branch to your right. Can’t you get 
him off for me. He’s a beauty, I’ll tell you.” 

Nelsie’s keen eyes took in the situation at a 
glance. 

“ Wait a minute.” She disappeared. 

Johnny, keeping his line tight, waited. 

Presently he saw her brown head appear 
above a rock over which the bobbing branch 
hung. 

Squirrel-like in her motion, she crept out on 
the branch. Farther and farther she came, 


70 The Black Schooner 

until Johnny caught his breath sharply as he 
shouted: 

“ Be careful! Don’t take too many chances.” 

Either she did not hear or did not care to 
listen, for she crept straight on. 

Now, just as the part of the branch she was 
on touched water, he saw her put out a brown 
arm to thrust it deep into the water where the 
tangled line hung. For ten seconds, working 
frantically, she hung there. 

Then something happened. Just what it was 
Johnny could not tell. Had the line suddenly 
loosened and thrown her off her balance? Had 
the bough cracked and dropped her? Johnny 
did not know. He only knew that with a little 
cry she plunged headforemost, to disappear be¬ 
neath the swirling waters. 

Instantly his mind was in a turmoil. Could 
she swim? He must save her. He stood there 
watching, waiting for her to come up, too 
startled to throw down his rod. 

Ten seconds passed and no sight of her. 


A Magnificent Battle 71 

Twenty, thirty, forty. Could it be that she had 
tangled with the line and was held down? 

He was contemplating a plunge when, with 
the suddenness of light, there came a powerful 
pull at the line. Caught as he was, half off his 
balance, he was thrown sprawling into the 
river. 

“ That fish,” he thought as he fought to 
rise. “ That fish! And the line is tangled about 
my wrist; I can't let go.” 

Fighting manfully he managed to bring him¬ 
self to the top for a breath of air. Instantly 
he was sent whirling forward over the surface 
of the water. Barely missing a jagged rock, 
he entered a narrow bay. 

“ That fish! ” he panted. “ Who would have 
thought he had such a pull.” 

Then suddenly he remembered Nelsie. She 
was in peril — must be saved. That line must 
come off his wrist. This senseless rush must be 
stopped. It did not stop. Struggle as he might, 
he could not lose that fish. 

“ There is a way! ” he said grimly. An over- 


72 


The Black Schooner 


hanging branch was within his reach. He 
struck out for it, grasped it. 

“ Shame to lose him after such a struggle, 
but there’s no other way.” 

He clung to the branch while it seemed his 
arms would be torn apart. He felt the line cut 
into his wrist and hated the man who could 
make such a line. 

Then, of a sudden, there was a snap and the 
strain ceased. The line had broken. He was 
free. 

“ He’s gone,” he breathed. 

At once in order to get his bearings he climbed 
upon a rock. He located the bough on which 
the line had tangled, the spot where Nelsie had 
gone down, and was about to swim for it when 
he caught a gurgle of laughter to the right and 
turning saw her like a dripping mermaid stand¬ 
ing upon a rock. 

“ Is this your fish? ” she trilled, holding up 
the king of rainbows. 

“ It was to have been,” he admitted in aston¬ 
ishment. “ Where did you find it? ” 


A Magnificent Battle 73 

“ Down there,” she pointed to the river. 

“ You can swim! ” It was hardly a question. 

“ Think I’d live by the river and not? What’d 
you break the line for?” she laughed suddenly. 
“ The fish and I were giving you a jolly ride. 
Besides, I needed you for a sea-anchor. Nearly 
lost the fish when you broke loose.” 

Then suddenly Johnny began to laugh. 
Nelsie, aided by the fish, had been towing him 
through the water. The fish had pulled her 
into the water and she had been plucky enough 
not to let go. 

“ Some girl! ” he breathed. Then aloud, 
“ Stay there. I’m coming over.” 

A few moments later found them basking in 
a little circle of sunshine which struggled down 
through the branches. They were allowing 
their clothes to dry. The splendid fish rested 
on a mat of dry grass beside them. 

“ Do you know,” said Johnny suddenly, “ I 
think I can help solve your father’s problem 
and find out where things are going wrong at 
the mill, only you may have to meet me here 


74 


The Black Schooner 


on the bank of the river at night and guide me 
to the giant fir tree. I don’t think I could find 
it in the dark.” 

“All right, I’m not afraid. I’ll come.” 

“ To-night?” 

“ At the jagged rock where the river turns, 
up a little way from here.” 

“ All right.” 

“At eight o’clock.” 

He rose to go. “ Thanks for helping me 
catch the fish. We’ll divide it.” He drew out 
his claspknife. 

“ Oh, no! ” she cried quickly. “ I caught a 
lot of brook trout this morning. Besides, I 
want you to weigh it. It’s the biggest I ever 
saw, and I — I landed it, you know.” 

“ I sure do know,” laughed Johnny. “ All 
right, to-night at eight.” He disappeared 
through the brush where, on a sandy bank, 
his boat lay stranded. 

“ Now, if only I can get Pant’s ‘ see-by¬ 
night ’ rigging to work,” he breathed as he 
made his way through the brush. 


CHAPTER X 


MYSTERY NUMBER FOUR 

“ Mystery number four,” said Pant as he 
threw open the door, just as darkness was 
falling. 

“ Which? The dog? I see you’ve tamed 
him.” A wolflike-looking dog had thrust his 
nose in at the open door. 

This dog had come howling about the cabin 
on the night they had landed. They had taken 
him for a wolf and had planned to shoot him. 
Then, just in time, Pant had discovered him 
to be a wild dog. 

“ Probably left behind by some roving In¬ 
dians,” he had suggested. With his native 
ability to tame things, he had decided to tame 
this dog and make him his companion. But 
up to this day the dog had eluded him. 

“ Nothing mysterious about that,” Pant 

75 


The Black Schooner 


76 

smiled. “ I met an Indian in a canoe this 
morning and learned the Indian dog call. 
When I tried it out on our friend Savage 
here, he came right up to me.” 

“ Going to call him Savage, eh?” 

“ Good name for him. Savage and I dis¬ 
covered a real mystery. I think it’s a moon¬ 
shine still but can’t be sure. It’s the strangest 
affair I’ve ever seen. But, say,” he exclaimed 
suddenly, “ where’d you get it? Is it cut 
out of wood and painted? Or is it real?” 
His eyes had fallen on Johnny’s prize trout. 

“ It’s real enough,” Johnny laughed. 
“ Twenty-two and a half pounds.” He held it 
up for inspection. “ Largest catch on record 
since the year one. Had to have help to land 
him, though.” 

Pant’s new mystery was for the moment 
forgotten. With the dog curled up at their 
feet, the two boys sat by the fire while Pant 
listened to Johnny’s story. 

“ I’ll say that’s some little pal you’ve dis¬ 
covered up there in the woods,” exclaimed 


_ \ 

Mystery Number Four 77 

Pant. “ Shouldn’t wonder if she’d be a lot of 
help to us in finding out our real mystery 
and running it to earth.” 

“ I know she will,” said Johnny with con¬ 
viction. “ By the way, is the ‘ see-by-night ’ 
ready? ” 

“ Yes. Why?” 

“ Going to try it out to-night with her as 
guide.” 

“ With her?” 

“ Sure. Can’t find the tree without her.” 

“The tree?” 

“ Why yes. That big fir tree she and I 
climbed the other day. We’re going to the 
top of that to-night. Then we’ll use the ‘ see- 
by-night.’ We’ll flash it down on the mill and 
discover if we can whether there is anything 
happening down there that ought not to be. 
The old mill’s financial heart is missing a beat 
now and then and it’s getting her father in 
bad. Colonel Remmington has an interest in 
the mill. That may be our real mystery.” 

“ Yes, but, Johnny, you don’t know any- 


78 


The Black Schooner 


thing about this Panther Eye stuff! I tell 
you it’s a mighty delicate affair. You have 
to have no end of care and experience too.” 

“ I can learn.” 

“ Not in an hour. Not so’s you’ll be safe.” 

“ Well, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have prom¬ 
ised, but I did. Can’t disappoint her. I’ll 
have to go.” 

“ Well, all right. I’ll do the best I can, but 
I tell you a hundred and fifty feet is an awful 
long jump. When you’ve got enemies about, 
the ground’s the safest place to be.” 

“ I’ll take a chance.” 

There for the moment the matter was 
dropped. 

“ By the way,” said Pant as he gave a trout 
steak a deft turn, “ now you’ve caught your 
precious trout, I suppose you’ll be going after 
that safe in the split rock?” 

Johnny smiled assent at his friend. 

“ First thing in the morning.” 

“ Where’s your block and tackle?” 

“ Oh, hang it! Haven’t any.” 


Mystery Number Four 79 

“ Some down in the fish-house. I can get it 
in the morning.” 

“All right; then we’ll go after the prize in 
the p. m. I wonder if it could be the real 
mystery after all? By the way, what was this 
other mystery you were speaking of a few 
moments ago?” 

“ It may not mean much and yet it may,” 
said Pant thoughtfully. “ After you left to¬ 
day and I had got the dog eating out of my 
hand, I resolved like Robinson Crusoe to go 
out exploring our island, so I struck right back 
into the woods. Found an old trail, probably 
half Indian and trapper and half deer. You 
know what they’re like; just get through and 
that’s about all. Wonderful aisles through na¬ 
ture’s temples. All dark, damp, silent and 
mysterious. You’re lost in a moment but you 
don’t care. You know you can find your way 
back, providing you break a twig at every 
cross-trail and make the twig point the way you 
should return. 

“ Well, I’d tramped on that way for three 


80 The Black Schooner 

hours; getting farther and farther into thicker 
woods all the time, when I suddenly came to 
quite a little stream. Had to take off my 
shoes and wade it. And right there on the 
other bank in the soft ooze I saw the track of 
a man’s foot. He had been barefooted as I 
was and the mark couldn’t have been more 
than a few hours old. 

“Well, sir! That gave me a start. I felt 
my hair sort of tickling at its roots and a 
creepy feeling go shootin’ up my spine. Wasn’t 
lookin’ for anything like that. 

“ I was half a mind to turn back but curi¬ 
osity got the better of my fear, so I went on. 

“ I hadn’t gone a half mile farther before 
the dog began to growl. I had a time getting 
him quiet but at last I did. After that I crept 

forward on my hands and knees for quite a 

piece. Then I saw smoke rising through the 
trees. It was queer smoke, not rising up in 
one point like smoke from a cabin chimney 
but like a forest fire, in several places. I 

knew there couldn’t be any forest fire though, 


Mystery Number Four 81 

for it would have been crackin’ and snappin’ 
and spreadin’ rapidly. It had me stuck. 

“ Not wishin’ to be caught right there, but 
wishin’ to investigate further, I left the trail 
and crept off through the brush, then turned 
toward the smoke again. 

“ A hundred yards farther on I came to 
the edge of a sort of narrow clearing and 
there, in the center of it, was a small, newly- 
built log cabin and, believe me or not, I tell 
you I saw eight smokestacks along one side of 
it, and every one of them smoking full blast. 

“ Savage, old boy,” I whispered to the dog, 
“ this seems like the unhealthiest bit of woods 
I've ever been in and I think we’d better just 
jog right on back to our cabin by the beach. 
Which is what we did, and here we are.” 

Pant paused to spear a boiled potato and help 
himself to a second slice of trout steak. 

“ Moonshiners, I’d say,” he mumbled, “ but 
I might be wrong.” 

“ Yes, you might,” said Johnny. “ I have 
another idea but I too might be wrong. I’ll 


82 


The Black Schooner 


not suggest it. We’ll just work each on his 
own theory. The thing’s worth looking into. 
When we’ve gone after these other mysteries 
we’ll take it up. Everything in its turn, I’d 
say. In the meantime I’ll be obliged to you 
•if you’d give me my first instruction in night 
gazing. I’m due up the river in an hour.” 


CHAPTER XI 


A STRANGE WATCH-TOWER 

Hardly had Johnny anchored his boat and 
stepped ashore at the appointed meeting-place 
that night when he heard a movement among 
the pine boughs and the next instant saw 
Nelsie step out into the moonlight. 

“ Good,” he whispered, “ you're here, but 
come into the shadows.” He led her back into 
the depths of the wood. “You never can tell 
who's skulking about in the night.” 

“ This way,” she whispered. “ Keep close 
to me. If you get lost it will be for all night. 
You'd never find your way out.” 

He heard the faint pit-pat of her footsteps 
on the bed of needles. Following more by 
sound than by sight, he kept close to her. 

It was a weird experience, this following a 
slip of a girl through a dense forest at night. 

83 


84 The Black Schooner 

Now he started back at the swish of a branch 
across his face, now caught the scolding chit- 
chit of a small bird disturbed from his slum¬ 
bers and now bumped into his leader as she 
paused to discover firm footing over a narrow 
stream. These things occurred only at long 
intervals. The most ghostlike moments were 
those in which he found himself drifting along 
through space with only the pit-pat of footfalls 
to accompany the beating of his heart. 

“ One might imagine that almost anything 
was lurking in those tree-tops,” he told him¬ 
self ; “ a wild cat, mountain-lion or some other 
terror that haunts the night. And as for the 
tree-trunks, any one of them might hide some 
human outlaw. 

“ I say, little squirrel,” he whispered, “ aren't 
you afraid?” 

“ Sometimes I am when I’m alone, but not 
with you,” she whispered back. 

Johnny felt something swell within his chest 
as he caught these words. 

“ She’ll never be afraid when I’m about, if 


A Strange Watch-tower 85 

I can help it,” he told himself stoutly. There 
are some things which even a brave fellow like 
Johnny cannot help, as he was to learn not 
many days hence. 

“ Here we are.” The girl whispered the 
words long before Johnny had expected them. 
He was not sure but that he was sorry the 
journey was over. There was enough of the 
unusual about it to make it hauntingly agree¬ 
able. 

But even more unusual adventures were in 
store for them. The climbing, in the dead of 
night, of a tree which appeared to rear its top 
to the very moon was unusual enough. 

“ Watch your step,” she whispered, as from 
the third round she paused for a second to 
pluck at his coat collar. “ Keep a few rounds 
behind me.” 

Johnny had his own notions about how 
far behind he would keep. His hands should 
be constantly on either side of her feet as she 
climbed the ladder; then, if she made a misstep 
and plunged for a fall, he might save her. 


86 


The Black Schooner 


“ When we reach the first limb, then it’s each 
fellow for himself/’ he thought, “ and the Lord 
have mercy on the fellow who slips.” 

She was surer footed than he knew. It was 
with great difficulty that he kept pace with 
her, and all too soon he found himself groping 
his way upward among the branches. 

More than once in the dim shadows which 
appeared to hang suspended from the very sky, 
she paused to balance herself on a limb and to 
whisper down instructions to him. And Johnny 
was very glad to obey them. 

At last, with a sigh of relief, she put out a 
hand which grasped his and guided him to a 
seat beside her. There, feeling her shoulder 
against his, he sat trying to fathom the depths 
of darkness beneath him and to realize if he 
could that there really was an earth somewhere 
down there. 

Slowly, as his eyes became accustomed to the 
scene, he made out certain bulks of darkness, 
certain gleams of light and knew they were 
woods and moonshine on the river. There were 


A Strage Watch-tower 87 

yellow spots straight before them and close to 
the white gleam of the river. 

“ See those twelve spots in a row?” whis¬ 
pered Nelsie. “ Those are the lights in the 
homes of the married millhands.” 

“ What are the two over to the right? ” 

“ Bunkhouse and store.” 

/ 

“ There’s a light moving about over where 
the mill should be.” Johnny suddenly became 
tense as his hand gripped her arm. “ It’s mov¬ 
ing about. What — ” 

“ Oh, that,” laughed Nelsie. “ That’s only 
old Mac. McDonald’s his real name. He’s 
the night watchman; sort of a pensioner. You 
see, he lost all but two of his fingers in a 
planer six years ago. He’s deaf and nearly 
blind but they couldn’t turn him out altogether, 
so they made him night watchman. He really 
isn’t any good. Dad wants the company to 
pension him and get a real night watchman. 
But the manager says Mac has as good a nose 
for smelling fire as anyone. He thinks that 
all a watchman needs to watch for is fire.” 


88 


The Black Schooner 


“ And I think he’s wrong,” said Johnny. “ I 
hope we’ll be able to prove he is. I think your 
mill’s profits are going down the river.” 

“ Down the river? ” 

“ Yes, you wait and see.” 

Johnny began fumbling first at his belt, then 
at his pockets. Lastly he took off his cap 
and gave it to Nelsie. 

“ Now,” he breathed, “we are going to find 
out whether I am an efficient ‘see-by-night’ 
operator.” 

“ ‘ See-by-night? ’ ” 

“Yep. It’s mighty dark down there but un¬ 
less the thing fails to work I can tell you pretty 
much everything that’s happening around that 
mill of yours.” 

A second later an intense spot of light ap¬ 
peared in the center of the scene before them. 
For an instant it lighted up the homes of the 
married millhands until Nelsie saw Mary Pulver, 
the saw-filer’s wife, enter the cabin next door. 

“What was that?” she whispered, gripping 
his arm. 


A Strange Watch-tower 89 

“ That,” he said grimly, “ was a false mo¬ 
tion. I winked my eye but failed to open it 
again. That left the light on too long. If it 
happens often, it will be a dead give-away and 
this tree will be as safe as a stone quarry with 
forty blasts going off in it.” 

“ Why?” 

“ Because if there are any lumber rustlers 
about your mill and they catch us spying on 
them from up here, they’ll slip a stick of dyna¬ 
mite under the roots of this tree and send it 
skyrocketing into space.” 

“ Oh, no!” Nelsie gripped his arm with 
fingers that hurt. 

“ They’d do that little thing and enjoy it 
like Christmas and Fourth of July all in one.” 

“ Then you’ll have to be careful, won’t you? ” 

“ I’m going to be.” 

For several moments there was silence. 

At last Nelsie could stand it no longer. 
“ What are you doing?” she whispered. 

“ I’m seeing all over the mill. Thing’s work¬ 
ing perfectly. Haven’t spotted anything yet, 


90 The Black Schooner 

though. All’s quiet. Too early, or the wrong 
night, maybe.” 

At last Johnny settled back into his place 
beside her. “ Have to wait a while and try 
again. Nothing doing now.” 

For a half hour they sat there suspended in 
air. A large part of the time they were silent. 
There was something about the darkness be¬ 
neath them, the gleam of the moon on the 
river and the silence of the night, which 
seemed to suggest silence. When they spoke 
it was in whispers. Johnny explained a little 
of the working of the “ see-by-night ” to Nelsie. 
She in turn told him about the mill. 

Three half hour periods of silence were 
broken only by a further survey of the mill. 
Johnny was just beginning to think that he must 
give it up for the night when of a sudden his 
eye caught some dark object moving about 
down by the edge of the millpond. 

“ Can’t be old Mac,” he breathed. “ He 
carried a light. Besides, this person must have 
some sort of a boat.” 


‘CHAPTER XII 


“ JOHNNY, PM NOT AFRAID’’ 

“ Nelsie,” he whispered hoarsely, “ there is 
a small telescope in my right pocket. Draw it 
out and hand it to me.” 

Without taking his eyes from the spot on 
the millpond, Johnny, when he had received the 
telescope, held it to his right eye, then adjusted 
its focus. 

Seconds passed, seconds in which Johnny 
could feel the girl’s heart beat as she pressed 
against his side in eager anticipation. 

“ Yes, yes,” he whispered at last. “ There 
are two of them in a small, flat-bottomed boat. 
Look like Italians; sort of short and dark.” 

More seconds passed, then — “ They’re lift¬ 
ing the boom and letting logs float out into the 
current of the river.” 

“Oh!” gasped Nelsie. “Oh, the robbers!” 

91 


92 


The Black Schooner 


Now Johnny was moving his glass slightly 
back and forth. 

“ They must have a watch out. Yes, there 
he is, a big, broad-shouldered fellow in a red 
shirt. Looks French Canadian.” 

“ Pierre LeBlanc,” breathed Nelsie. 

Just at that second something happened. A 
gnat is a very small creature, but can do a 
deal of mischief. One had blown into Johnny’s 
left eye. This eye, which had so successfully 
operated the delicate electric switch, closed 
automatically and refused to open. That left 
the “ see-by-night ” in full operation. A glar¬ 
ing spot of light lay on the millpond. It had 
shifted a trifle. It did not reveal the timber 
rustlers but did bring the mass of logs out in 
bold relief. 

/ 

“ Thunder! ” exploded Johnny as in wild 
consternation he dragged the instrument from 
his head and so snuffed out the light. 

o 

“ Just when things were going right,” he 
groaned. 

“ Well, anyway, you saw them.” 


93 


“Johnny, I’m Not Afraid” 

“ That doesn’t do much good. I couldn’t 
identify them, since I never saw them before. 
I was going to bring you here again and let 
you use the instruments. You could probably 
tell for sure who it was.” 

“Well, can’t we?” 

“ It would be risky now. They saw the light. 
If they followed it to its source, there’s noth¬ 
ing they’d stop at. Just for that I think we’d 
better get down out of here. They might hurry 
over and be waiting for us.” 

Johnny slid from his seat, gave her his hand 
to the first limb, then, together they went scur¬ 
rying down the tree. 

As they dropped silently to the ground, 
Johnny put a hand on her arm. .They stood 
there for a second. 

A twig snapped off to the right of them. Was 
is the rustlers? 

They did not pause to see. Their way led off 
to the left. They took it with a bound. 

There followed another long tramp through 
the dark, mysterious forest. When at last they 


94 


The Black Schooner 


reached the bank of the river they sat down on 
a log to think. 

“ I tell you what! ” said Nelsie at last. “ Now 
we know they’re doing it, we could set a watch 
down there by the millpond somewhere.” 

“ It wouldn’t do,” said Johnny soberly. 
“ They’d find it out and the game would be up. 
That might stop them for a time but it would 
never catch them.” 

Again there was silence. The river, with the 
silver gleam of the moon upon it, swept on to 
the sea. The forest whispered to them out of 
its silence. 

“ Johnny,” he felt her hand lightly upon His 
arm, “ Johnny, I’m not afraid.” 

“ Afraid to — ” 

“ Climb the tree again at night. It — it’s for 
my father. I’m not afraid.” 

“ Well, if you’re not, I shouldn't be.” We'll 

For a moment their hands came together in 
a clasp that was a pledge, then they rose and 
with a whispered, “ Good night,” parted. 


“Johnny, I’m Not Afraid” 95 

“ Fellow’s a fool for having anything to do 
with girls. They’re sure to get him in where 
he can’t get out,” Johnny whispered to him¬ 
self. A moment later he said more quietly, “ I’m 
not sure but that I should have done it any¬ 
way. Besides, she’s a dead game sport.” 

That night before Johnny crept into his 
blankets he reviewed in his mind the events of 
the past few days. 

“ Things sure have been moving lively 
enough,” he told himself. “And talk about 
mysteries. There are mysteries galore. Ques¬ 
tion is, which one brings us the big pay?” 

He called them before him one by one. 
There was the Black Schooner. Gliding silently 
down the river at night; returning at early 
dawn; making a visit to the fish-house where 
the Dust Eater was kept; it certainly presented 
interesting and fascinating problems. 

Johnny considered various theories. 

“ Nothing it couldn’t be,” he told himself. 
“ Smuggler, whiskey-runner, importer of illegal 
Chinese labor, Japanese spy. Any of these 


96 


The Black Schooner 


easily enough. But which is it or is it any one 
of them, and how are we to know? 

“ Huh! ” he grunted a moment later, “ it may 
be just some innocent nut who likes scooting 
about in the dark. Looks queer, though, even 
at that.” 

Then there were the timber rustlers. True, 
this mystery had been partly solved. The man 
lifted the boom and allowed the logs to drift 
down the river. But what happened then? 
How were the logs caught and disposed of at 
a profit? That would have to be looked into. 
The identity of the rustlers must be established. 
The giant fir tree must be climbed again at the 
dead of night and with the possibility of enemies 
lurking about in the bushes. 

“ Cheer up,” he told himself, “ the worst is 
yet to come.” 

After all, when this affair had been com¬ 
pletely cleared up, would they have solved the 
mystery they were to be paid big money for 
solving? Well, that was the question. They 
would at least have the satisfaction of having 


“Johnny, I’m Not Afraid” 97 

helped someone out of trouble and that in it¬ 
self was a great privilege. 

Then there was the small steel safe in the 

i 

split of the submerged rock. Who had lowered 
it to that strange resting place? Had it been 
the crew of the Black Schooner? What did it 
contain? Might contain nothing at all. It 
might have been stolen, rifled of its contents, 
then dropped in the river that it might not be 
found as a damaging witness. 

“ Not very probable,” he told himself. “ Who¬ 
ever put that safe down there, wanted to be 
able to find it again. He could always locate that 
split rock on a clear, calm day. He could come 
back and lift the safe at his leisure. If he 
hadn’t thought that way about it, if he’d wanted 
to lose it forever, he could have taken it out 
into the bay and dropped it where the water 
is deep. Question is, what does it contain? 
That may be our real mystery after all.” 

And then, of course, there was Pant’s new 
mystery, the mystery of the deep woods. Back 
there in the very heart of the forest was a cabin 


98 


The Black Schooner 


with eight stovepipes sticking out of its roof. 
What could anyone want of that many stove : 
pipes in one small cabin? 

“ Mighty queer/’ he told himself, “ but I 
have at least one fair guess.” 

At that he crept into his cot. 

He lay there for a time listening. The wind 
was rising. He could hear the pine trees sigh¬ 
ing and could catch the rush of water on the 
beach. 

“ Going to storm,” he told himself. “ If it 
does we won’t be able to lift that safe to¬ 
morrow. Can’t locate the rock when the 
water’s rough. Can’t climb the big fir tree 
either. Well, we’ll have a rest maybe and I 
guess we need it.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


“ SHE’S A SCHOONER ALL RIGHT ” 

There is no music so suggestive of sleep as 
the patter-patter and drip-drip-drip of rain on 
the roof of an unplastered cabin in the woods. 
Johnny heard it as in a dream, just as the first 
shadowy flickers of daylight struggled through 
the trees. With a sigh of content he turned 
over on his other side and drifted back to the 
land of dreams. 

When Pant came in dripping with rain, he 
did not awaken Johnny. He had things to tell 
but they could wait. 

“ No use to rout him out,” he told himself. 
“ Nothing we can do to-day except go for the 
block and tackle and maybe get back there in 
the woods and have a look at old Mr. Cabin 
with eight smoke-pipes.” 

Having stripped off his water-soaked gar- 

99 


> , > 


100 


The Black Schooner 


ments, he made himself a cup of steaming 
coffee and fried some bacon and potatoes, then 
sat down to a relished repast. 

He was thinking of stretching out for three 
winks when Johnny yawned and sat up. 

“ Well,” he drawled sleepily, “ what luck?” 

“ Saw things,” said Pant. “ How about 
you?” 

“ Saw things too, but not as much as I 
should have liked. Gnat flew in my eye and 
jammed things up in fine style. Lighted the 
place up like daytime.” 

“ Whew! exclaimed Pant. “ That was bad. 
I was afraid of something like that.” 

“ Pm going back though,” said Johnny 
stoutly. “ I saw enough to make me sure I 
was on the track of something.” 

“ How’s this fit into your part of the story? ” 
said Pant, after listening to Johnny’s experi¬ 
ence. “ I saw a gasoline schooner, white, not 
our old black friend, gasoline, with a real pop- 
pop-pop to her, hanging about the end of the 
bay early in the night. She was too far away 


“She’s a Schooner, All Right” 101 

for me to be sure, but I thought she had a row¬ 
boat and a small log boom in tow. Pm sure 
I saw a dozen or so of fine sawlogs floating 
downstream; regular six-feet-through fellows, 
they were. Then a little while after that I 
thought I saw that rowboat of theirs dodging 
about behind the schooner. Too far ,away to 
be sure though.” 

“ Tallies with my idea of the thing exactly! ” 
exclaimed Johnny excitedly, rising and pacing 
the floor. “ Whole gang of them, regular tim¬ 
ber-rustling company. Those fellows up at the 
mill release the logs at the boom and your 
friends down here catch them in a small boom 
and haul them away with their schooner/’ 

“ But the logs are marked,” said Pant. 
“ How could they use them.” 

“ Little they care about that. Probably got 
a small mill in a secluded spot and a little 1 
timber of their own. They cut the stolen logs 
right up into lumber and peddle it up and 
down the bay. Who could prove anything on 
them? 


102 


The Black Schooner 


“ I can/’ he exclaimed suddenly, answering 
his own question. “ And I will! ” 

“ All right,” smiled Pant, “ but watch your 
step. They’re probably a bad lot — wouldn’t 
stop at anything.” 

“ I don’t care for that,” said Johnny quietly. 
“ Of course I’ll be careful; but this old world 
was made for honest people to live in and I’m 
going to do all in my power to see that honest 
people have a chance to do most of the living.” 

“But how about the Black Schooner?” he 
asked suddenly. “ Did you see anything of 
that? ” 

“I did,” smiled Pant. “She’s some craft! 
Not a submarine but a regular schooner. Built 
like a racer; big, heavy prow and not much of 
any after-deck. Curious part of it all is her 
power. What makes her go? She’s smokeless 
and noiseless as an air-gun. She came quite 
close in last night. I could see her as plainly 
as I see you now, and could even hear the click- 
click of some sort of engine rods. That was 
all. Goes like the wind, too; I never saw any 


“She’s a Schooner, All Right” 103 

craft that could go as fast. No smoke, no noise. 
One would say she was one of those toy boats 
that wind up with a crank and shoot ahead until 
the spring runs down.” 

“You don’t think that’s it?” 

“ Of course not. Couldn’t build a craft 
strong enough to hold a steel spring with such 
power.” 

“ Did you see anyone on board of her? ” 

“ Just one person, a man, with hair as white 
as snow and no cap on. Hair stuck straight out 
behind him; rather long hair. That’s how fast 
he was going.” 

“ Out to sea? ” 

“ Out to sea.” 

“ Did he come back? ” 

“ Came back a half hour ago. There’s a 
sea on, biggest I’ve known since I came here. 
Big breakers rolling in. And you may believe 
me or not, but that craft was just jumping from 
crest to crest. If anything she was going faster 
than when she went out. And there was that 
old gray-haired fellow, ridin’ the storm like 


104 


The Black Schooner 


Neptune himself. I tell you it was weird!” 

“You didn’t see anyone else?” 

“ Nope.” 

“ Well, that beats all. Shouldn’t wonder if 
that schooner, along with the steel safe in the 
split rock, were our real mystery. Can’t tell 
though.” 

“ No, you can’t, and just for that I suggest 
that you go for the block and tackle this 
morning while I get a bit of sleep, and that, 
if it’s still stormin’, which I think it will be, 
we take the dog and go back to have a look 
at old eight smokes.” 

“ All right. It’s going to be a damp trip, 
but looks like it’s worth it.” 

“ This is the beginning of the rainy season.” 

“ Hope not. Hope it’s only the first notice. 
Hope we get two or three days more of sun¬ 
shine first anyway. If we don’t, things are 
going to look bad.” 

Johnny drew on his slicker and went out in 
the storm, leaving his companion to get some 
much-needed sleep. 


CHAPTER XIV 


A MYSTERY THAT GETS A LAUGH 

Johnny was due for something of a surprise 
that day. His trip for the block and tackle 
seemed a simple enough affair, so simple that 
he did not dream of taking a rifle or any other 
instrument for protection along. Yet the affair 
provided him with a decided thrill. 

Well protected by slicker and hip boots, he 
enjoyed the solitary journey to the abandoned 
fish-house where the Dust Eater reposed. 
There is a joy to be had from a lonely tramp 
through the woods on a rainy day that is to 
be secured in no other way. With the cool 
damp of saturated atmosphere bathing your 
forehead, with the drip-drip of raindrops from 
the leaves sounding about you, with the soft 
squash of the ground beneath your feet, you 
tramp on and on and on, with the spirit of 

105 


106 


The Black Schooner 


restlessness which so often controls you, slowly 
oozing away until you feel yourself a part of 
the cool repose that is all about you. 

Johnny had been enjoying all this to the full, 
had tramped through the woods, waded across 
three small streams swollen to many times their 
normal size by the torrents of rain, and found 
himself approaching the ancient fish-house, 
when something caused him to start and stare, 
then to listen with all his ears. 

Had he caught a sound? He thought he had, 
but now all was silent. The drip-drip-drip of 
rain upon the leaves was all he heard. 

“ Guess I just imagined it,” he told himself. 
“ Anyway, if it was something it was only a 
squirrel scolding about the rain or some boat 
sound coming in from the bay.” 

Again his feet came down swash-swash as he 
pushed forward across a bit of swamp where 
the black tamaracks turned the uncertain light 
of a gloomy day into almost midnight dark¬ 
ness. 

“ Boo! ” he shivered. “ A place like this on 


A Mystery That Gets a Laugh 107 

a rainy day would be a likely one for a murder 
or something like that. I’ll be glad to get out 
of here.” 

He did not leave the shadows as quickly as 
he expected, for, just as he was preparing to 
emerge from the darkest depths he again caught 
the sound that had disturbed him. Again he 
paused to listen. 

“ It was something,” he told himself. “ No 
squirrel either. Squirrels don’t make sounds 
like that. I don’t believe it was a sound from 
the bay either. If it was, then my sense of 
location has gone flooey. Seems to come from 
that old fish-house.” 

As he stood there in awed silence the sound 
came again. Faint, indistinct, of uncertain 
origin and meaning, it shot an unnamed fear 
into his very being. 

“ What can that be?” Johnny breathed to 
himself. 

There was no person supposed to be at the 
boathouse and no one save themselves lived 
within miles of it. The sound, a hoarse, grat- 


108 


The Black Schooner 


ing, human voice-like sound, resembled nothing 
he had ever heard from beast or bird. 

“ No, not even from a raven,” he told him¬ 
self. 

For a full three minutes he stood there ir¬ 
resolute. Just as he was beginning to call him¬ 
self a chicken-hearted child, the sound came 
again. Louder and more distinct than before, 
it sent a chill racing up his spine. 

“ Like someone in distress — a throttled 
groan,” he whispered. “ Wonder if it could be? 
Wonder if I ought to go to their assistance?” 
Johnny asked himself. 

Again he passed a moment in indecision. If 
someone were really in distress, there was al¬ 
most sure to be someone else at the bottom of 
it. Someone might have attacked an enemy 
here. If he had, he was doubtless still linger¬ 
ing about. Little chance an unarmed boy 
would have against such a person. He thought 
of the visit the Black Schooner had made to 
the fish-house, and of the mysterious cabin of 
“ eight smokes ” hidden away in the woods, 


A Mystery That Gets a Laugh 109 

thought, too, of the safe in the split rock and 
of the disappearing lumber at the mill. 

“ This thing might be connected with any 
one of them,” he told himself. 

Finding himself growing more and more 
afraid to go forward, he at last dragged him¬ 
self by main force from his position and went 
stealthily forward to the very edge of the 
thicket. Here he paused again. Once he left 
this thicket he must come out into a half open 
space where a few scattered pine trees grew. 

“ Be a fair mark to anyone who chose to 
shoot,” he told himself. “ All the same, what’s 
the sense of being afraid? Probably just no 
one after all.” He was about to step boldly 
out into the open when again the strange, 
haunting groan smote his ears. 

Quickly he stepped backward, then, wheel¬ 
ing about, disappeared in the direction from 
which he had come. “ No use taking unneces¬ 
sary risks,” he told himself. “ I’ll get Pant 
and the guns.” 

A half hour later the two of them, with 




110 


The Black Schooner 


rifles slung beneath their arms, stood in that 
same spot and peered intently in the direction 
of the fish-house, while their ears were strained 
to catch the least sound. 

“ Now bring on your ghost,” bantered Pant. 

With Pant by his side and a good rifle in his 
hand, Johnny did not find the situation half so 
terrifying as it had seemed before. He was 
growing somewhat ashamed of his former fear 
when once more there came that peculiar whin¬ 
ing groan. 

“ Lordy, but that’s haunting,” exclaimed 
Pant, clutching his companion’s arm. “ Sounds 
half human and half beastly. Don’t wonder you 
were scared — would have been myself.” 

“ Question is,” he said thoughtfully a moment 
or two later, “what makes it? Who’s the 
rascal who is setting up all this disturbance? 
Or is it really someone in distress?” 

“ Pm for finding out at once,” said Johnny 
impetuously. 

“ Wait,” said Pant with a hand still on his 
arm. * If it’s really anyone, he’s stood it for 


A Mystery That Gets a Laugh 111 

more than a half hour. He can stand it a few 
moments more. It may be a plant, you know, a 
trick to lead us into a trap.” 

He had taken his watch from his pocket. 
When the sound came again he noted the exact 
time down to seconds. Then, while their hearts 
beat time to the tick of his watch, they waited 
and listened. 

Three times the long-drawn groan smote 
their ears. At each repetition Pant noted the 
minute and second hand’s position. At the end 
of the third time he straightened up with a 
grunt. “ Exactly the same period between 
sounds and the sounds are exactly the same 
duration. Doesn’t look like any human being, 
or animal, would be as regular as that.” 

“ He wouldn’t,” exclaimed Johnny, much re¬ 
lieved. “ Pant, you’re a genius at finding 
things out! It’s something mechanical. Come 
on, let’s see what.” 

Again he started forward but Pant pulled 
him back. 

* You forget,” he whispered, “ that we are 


112 


The Black Schooner 


living here in the woods to find things out; that 
we have already discovered that some things 
are going on which apparently shouldn't be. 
Don't you suppose that some people by this 
time have discovered something of our reason 
for being here and don’t you suppose they 
know something of what we know?” 

“ Y-e-s, might be,” Johnny hesitated. “ But 
what's that got to do with this?” 

“ May have a lot,” whispered Pant. “ This 
thing, as I said before, may be a plant, a trap. 
We want to go slow, that’s all.” 

They did go slow. They crept through the 
forest that lay between them and the fish- 
house, as hunters of mountain lions might creep 
upon their prey. With rifles ready they skulked 
on hands and knees from bush to bush and from 
tree to tree. When they had reached the last 
clump of trees at the edge of the small clear¬ 
ing that surrounded the fish-house, and when 
they had lain face down upon the ground until 
the sound smote their ears once more and they 
had determined that the sound must come from 


113 


A Mystery That Gets a Laugh 

within the very walls of the fish-house, where 
rested their precious seaplane, their fear and 
excitement knew no bounds. 

“ Better crawl the rest of the way,” Pant 
whispered, “ and not a word as we go. If it’s 
a plant, they may not have seen or heard us. 
We may be able to get the drop on them yet.” 

The moments they spent crossing that open, 
grass-grown spot seemed hours to Johnny. He 
had never experienced fear in an open fight, but 
this thing got on his nerves. He kept wonder¬ 
ing what a bullet in his back would feel like. 
Would it really hurt, or would it merely sting 
a trifle at first and do its hurting after? 

Passing over a little ridge, they dropped into 
a small depression which, Johnny fancied, was 
like a shell hole in Flanders, but was in reality 
the hollow left by a stump burned out of the 
earth. Another ridge was traversed and they 
were at last up to the side of the building. 
Still nothing had happened. 

“ The silence is ghostly,” Johnny told him¬ 
self. 


114 


The Black Schooner 


At that second the silence was broken by the 
sound that should have grown familiar, but had 
not, the moaning groan. It seemed this time 
as if it were coming from the very earth beneath 
their feet. Johnny was obliged to take him¬ 
self well in hand to keep from springing to his 
feet and running away. 

“ It’s inside,” breathed Pant, propping him¬ 
self up on his knees and preparing to peer 
through a crack in the board walls. 

Johnny followed his example. What they 
saw inside was a large square of black water 
and in the middle of it, her wings spread as if 
for flight, their seaplane, the Dust Eater. 
Everything seemed so much as they had left 
it that Pant found himself tempted to believe 
that the sound had not existed at all, that it 
was all an illusion of the ear. But just as he 
was thinking that, a strange thing happened: 
the wide wooden propeller of the motor closest 
to them began to revolve, and as it did so there 
came again that same low, sobbing moan. The 
boys jumped up with a jerk. 


A Mystery That Gets a Laugh 115 

*Goof!" grunted Johnny, starting back as 
if he'd been shot. “ What's that?" 

“Hist!" whispered Pant. “Want to give 
us away? It's someone trying to start our 
plane." His eyes were still glued upon that 
slowly revolving propeller. Three revolutions 
it made, then quite abruptly it stopped. 

“ In three minutes," whispered Pant, set¬ 
tling back but still peering through the crack, 
“unless the program is changed, she'll turn 
again. I wonder why the exact period? Won¬ 
der where they're hid?" 

If anyone were hiding in that barn-like struc¬ 
ture with its water for a floor, it surely was 
something of a mystery where they were keep¬ 
ing themselves. “ Might be in the cabin or 
beneath the fuselage," whispered Johnny. 

Three long minutes they waited, then again, 
true to Pant's prophecy, there came the haunt¬ 
ing sound as the propeller began to revolve. 

This time the look of suspicion on Pant's face 
was suddenly replaced by one of understanding 
and amusement. 


116 The Black Schooner 

“ Come on,” he exclaimed out loud, “we’re 
going in. We are a pair of nuts; at least I’m 
one.” 

Quite overcome with astonishment, Johnny 
followed him into the building and was soon 
climbing over one wing to the engine whose 
propeller had but the second before ceased to 
revolve. 

“ It’s as simple as anything,” explained Pant, 
“ once you know about it. You see, the last 
time I was over here I was working on a little 
invention of mine, a rigging for getting a little 
power when you’re really up against it. A fel¬ 
low must have his batteries charged or he can’t 
start his plane, so I thought up a little scheme 
for charging the batteries when they run down. 
This little jar here contains certain chemicals 
which slowly produce a gas which creates a low 
pressure. When this pressure is strong it sets 
a tiny piston going. The piston is connected 
with a small generator which produces elec¬ 
trical power. The electrical power is stored 
in a battery; Enough can be produced in a 


117 


A Mystery That Gets a Laugh 

day to start one of our motors. When I was 
here before I left the batteries connected with 
this motor and all this little mechanism in order. 
I threw off this lever that keeps the little piston 
from moving but by some chance it has slipped 
back into gear. The apparatus produces enough 
electricity, apparently, to turn the motor over 
three times. Then the supply of energy is ex¬ 
hausted and the propeller stops revolving. 
Simple, isn’t it?” he smiled. 

“ Simple as mud,” grinned Johnny, vastly 
relieved. “ You and your wild inventions will 
be the death of me yet. What gets me is what 
made that ghostly noise?” 

“ That’s even more simple,” smiled Pant. 
“ Dust Eater hasn’t been used lately and the 
oil has gummed on the propeller, hardened up 
so it creates friction and makes that scream 
of a sound.” 

As proof of his statement, he stepped for¬ 
ward and gave the propeller a turn. The sound 
which came forth was evidence enough. 

“ All I got to say,” said Johnny, as he led 


118 


The Black Schooner 


the way in search of the block and tackle needed 
for lifting the safe from the bottom of the 
bay, “ is that it’s about time we were using the 
Dust Eater a bit if she’s going to start play¬ 
ing tricks on us like that.” 

Had he known how soon they would use her 
and what a journey they were to take with her, 
he might have felt a trifle startled. As it was 
he procured the needed equipment and was soon 
tramping back through the rain with Pant. 

“ Have to get an early start for old ‘eight 
smokes / 99 he said over his shoulder as they 
trudged along. 

“ Sure will. Going to get dark early,” re¬ 
plied his companion. 


CHAPTER XV 


EIGHT SMOKES 

The forest, as they started for the mysterious 
cabin of “ eight smokes ” that afternoon, was 
a water-soaked blanket leaking at every thread. 
They were well protected by slickers but their 
boots were soon making strange squish-squashes 
as they walked. As for the dog, he trailed along 
behind them with the rain dripping off his tail 
as if it were a down-spout to an eaves-trough. 

“ Hope we find our friend home,” mumbled 
Pant. 

“What’ll we do if he is?” asked Johnny. 

“ Pretend we’re lost and inquire our way to 
the shore. We can do that much without ex¬ 
citing suspicion. May get a peep inside his 
cabin at the same time.” 

But they did not inquire, not that day. Long 

119 


120 


The Black Schooner 


before they reached the place the pungent odor 
of wood smoke reached their nostrils. 

“ If it’s a moonshine still, where does he get 
the stuff to make it out of? ” whispered Johnny. 

“ Can’t tell. There’s always a way.” 

Coming at last to a bend in the trail Pant 
put back a warning hand. 

“ Right here, soon’s we make the turn, we 
see the place. I’ll creep ahead and reconnoiter.” 

He disappeared while Johnny squatted down 
by a huge tree-trunk and held the dog’s head 
between his knees. 

“ S’all right,” Pant whispered a moment 
later. “ No one in sight. But, man, oh, man'! 
he’s kickin’ up a smoke. Got all eight of ’em 
smudgin’ at once.” 

He began creeping forward on hands and 
knees. Johnny followed him in silence. The 
dog slunk along behind. 

Traveling thus they covered a quarter of 
the way to the cabin, a third, a half, three- 
quarters. 

From time to time they paused to listen. 


Eight Smokes 121 

“ Hist! ” exclaimed Pant. “ Into the brush. 
I think I heard something. ,, 

Like some wild creatures, seeking shelter 
from the hunter, they faded into the dull brown 
of the brush beyond the path. 

For a full five minutes, with wildly beating 
hearts, they watched and listened. 

“Pshaw! Guess it was nothing/’ exclaimed 
Pant, preparing to make his way back to the 
trail. 

This time it was Johnny who called a halt. 
Gripping Pant’s arm he pulled him back. To 
his keen ears there had come the faint pit-pat 
of footsteps on the moss-padded trail. 

He was not a moment too soon, for at that 
very instant a man appeared in the trail not a 
hundred yards from them. He came pussy¬ 
footing along toward, them on the trail. In 
one hand he carried a gallon jug. 

“ Moonshine,” whispered Pant. What’d 
I tell you?” 

Again Johnny’s hand gripped his arm. The 
man had paused and half turned in the trail. 


122 


The Black Schooner 


The next instant he whirled about, set the jug 
beside the trail and retraced his footsteps. 

“ It’s our chance,” whispered Pant. “ If he’s 
out of sight for three minutes I’ll have that jug. 
It’s evidence — the very best kind.” 

At once he left Johnny and began creeping 
toward the place where the jug stood. 

Fascinated, Johnny watched him. It was 
a race between a possibility and a probability. 
It was possible for Pant to reach the spot in 
a certain length of time. It was probable thal 
the stranger, who had evidently forgotten some¬ 
thing, would return before that time elapsed. 
If he should chance to appear in the trail a? 
the exact second in which Pant stretched out 
his hand for the jug, what would happen? 

Pant had disappeared from sight. The dog 
made a move as if to go in search of him. 
Johnny pulled him down. A deluge of water 
shaken from the trees drenched them. The 
dog uttered a low whine. Johnny pulled him 
under his slicker with a whispered, “ Here, 
none of that! ” 


123 


Eight Smokes 

A minute passed; two, three, four. The 
stranger did not re-appear. Pant must be near¬ 
ing the goal. Johnny’s heart beat wildly. The 
final moment had arrived. 

He saw Pant’s hand reach out for the handle 
of the jug. For one tense second it rested, then 
both hand and jug disappeared. 

Pant began working his way back. Still 
the stranger did not appear. 

The moments crept by. “ Strange he does 
not come for the jug,” Johnny whispered to 
himself. “ Wonder what would happen if he 
did? Pant had no real right to take it. He 
isn’t sure it’s any of our business. Just be¬ 
cause a thing is a mystery, isn’t enough reason 
for going about picking things up.” 

He was roused from these reflections by a 
hand on his arm. He started, then smiled, ft 
was Pant. 

“ Think I’ll just pull tire cork and touch my 
tongue to it,” said Pant displaying the jug, 
* just to make certain.” 

The cork gave a little pop as it came out. 


124 The Black Schooner 

Tilting the jug upward Pant lifted it to his 
mouth. 

Of a sudden, when the jug was almost at his 
lips, there was a crash of breaking crockery, a 
gurgle and the jug, broken in a thousand pieces, 
lay at his feet. 

“ Ugh! ” grunted Pant in surprise. 

Johnny leaped to his feet. 

Pant dropped on the ground and began look¬ 
ing about among the pieces of the jug. 

At last he picked something up and thrust it 
in his pocket. 

“ Think we’d better be traveling,” he whis¬ 
pered hurriedly. 

“ Which way? ” 

“ Back.” 

Johnny protested: 

“ Why, we haven’t really discovered any¬ 
thing. We — ” 

“ Discovered enough,” Pant broke in. 

“ Look at that dog,” whispered Johnny. 

A moment before the dog had been lapping 
up some of the contents of the broken jug, now 


Eight Smokes 125 

he lay writhing on the ground, apparently in 
the pains of death. 

Pant gave him one look. 

“ Can’t do anything for him. C’m’on. Let’s 
get out.” 

He led the way back over the trail at a ter¬ 
rific rate. Only when they were on their own 
doorstep did he pause to look back. 

“ Fellow’d think you’d seen a ghost,” Johnny 
panted. 

“ Worse than that,” smiled Pant. “ I’ve got 
his bullet in my pocket.” 

“ Bullet?” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

Pant drew from his pocket a much flattened 
lead bullet. 

“ That hit the jug,” he said quietly. 

“ How — how’d you guess it? ” Johnny asked 
in amazement. “ There wasn’t a sound.” 

Pant held up a bloody finger. “ Just grazed 
it,” he explained. “ Tore the skin. That was 
all, but it was enough.” 

“ Where’d the bullet come from?” 


126 


The Black Schooner 


“ How’d I know? Some sort of gun.” 

“ Silent one then.” 

“ Silent as an Arctic night.” 

“ Think he meant it for you or the jug?” 

“ Don’t know.” 

“ That stuff in the jug was rank poison. It 
killed the dog — would have killed you if you’d 
tasted it.” 

Pant shivered. “ Far’s I’m concerned, I’m 
through with that mystery for the present. 
Check it off the list.” 

“ You can’t check any real mystery off the 
list; your mind won’t let you. That’s one 
thing you’ve got to learn.” 

“ Do you know,” Pant said after a good sup¬ 
per had revived his spirits somewhat, “ I didn’t 
see him very clearly, but there was something 
about that man that reminded me of the old 
fellow who runs the Black Schooner. If he 
hadn’t had his coat collar turned so high and 
his hat pulled so low I think I could have been 
sure about it. As it is I can’t tell.” 


127 


Eight Smokes 

“ Perhaps/’ said Johnny thoughtfully, “ our 
mysteries are all joined together like the links 
of a chain.” 

“ And perhaps not,” smiled Pant. 

The boys discussed the events of the day for 
a time — and turned in without having reached 
any conclusions as to their various problems. 


CHAPTER XVI 


AN INTERRUPTED MOVE 

To the great joy of our young detectives the 
next day dawned bright and fair. 

“ And now for the safe in the old split rock/’ 
exclaimed Johnny. “ The water’s smooth as 
glass. There’s one mystery that will be solved 
before another twenty-four hours and I’m glad 
of it. We haven’t gone deep enough into any¬ 
thing yet even to send in a report, and Colonel 
Remmington will be looking for one.” 

“ We’ve got only enough rope to reach shore,” 
said Pant thoughtfully, “ so we’ll have to use 
it that way; just fasten one block to a tree 
on the bank and the other to the safe. We can 
drag it ashore that way and it’s the only way 
we can raise it.” 

“ Probably you’re right,” said Johnny, throw- 

128 


An Interrupted Move 129 

ing a coil of rope across his shoulders. “ Well, 
let's get moving.” 

They were soon in the boat and paddling 
strongly upstream. 

“ I’ll have to dive down and wrap this bit 
of steel cable about the safe so we can hitch the 
block to it,” said Johnny as they neared the 
spot. “ You can get the rope and tackle all 
clear while I am doing that.” 

To anchor over the split rock it was neces¬ 
sary to run past it, then drop their anchor and 
drift back. The anchor was light; the cur¬ 
rent strong. The anchor would drift until it 
came to a group of rocks on the bed of the 
stream just above the split rock. Here it 
would hang up and leave them in just the posi¬ 
tion they desired. They had lowered their 
anchor. It was slowly drifting downstream. 
Johnny was stripping off his shirt, preparing 
for the plunge while Pant was arranging his 
ropes when, of a sudden, Pant dropped his 
ropes to seize his casting rod, which chanced 
to be in the bow of the boat. 


130 


The Black Schooner 


“ Hist,” he whispered. “ Sit down.” 

“ What is it? ” Johnny whispered. 

“ Don’t look round. Sit as you are. It’s the 
Black Schooner. It’s skirting the other shore. 
Think it will go round the bend and out of 
sight in a minute.” 

Pant’s hand shook so badly that he got his 
line in a tangle and was unable to make a 
single cast. 

In the meantime the Black Schooner, for 
the first time going at a moderate speed, crept 
along near the opposite bank like some sub¬ 
marine destroyer searching for enemy craft. 

“Is he on board?” whispered Johnny. 

“ Can’t see anyone.” 

“Gone yet?” 

“ Not quite. Now. There they go.” 

“By the Great Horn Spoon!” Johnny ex¬ 
claimed, “ that was a narrow one! Think he 
saw enough to understand?” 

“ Don’t know.” 

“What’d he do if he did?” 

Pant considered a moment: 


An Interrupted Move 131 

“ Don’t know. Nothing, probably. Probably 
doesn’t even know the safe is there.” 

“ Yes, and maybe he does. We’d better let 
it go until night. I can fix up an electric light 
on a storage battery and take it down in the 
water with me when I dive. That’ll give me 
light enough. He’s likely to come back by 
here most any time and spoil things.” 

“ All right,” said Pant, reaching for the 
anchor, “ to-night it is.” 

They drifted downstream in silence. Neither 
spoke until they were nearing their landing 
place. 

“Say!” exclaimed Pant, “how you going to 
find the place at night? You can’t see it as you 
drift over it.” 

“ That’s easy enough,” said Johnny. “ Glad 
you spoke of it though. You can locate a spot 
anywhere on the surface of the water by lining 
up two sets of points on the shore. I’ve done 
it lots of times to locate a fishing hole. 

“ You see, the way you do it, you go to the 
spot when the sun is shining and the water 


132 


The Black Schooner 


clear. When you’ve located the rock, shoal 
or weed-bed you wish to mark you look to 
the right of you and perhaps you see a sharp 
pointed rock on shore. A little back from the 
shore you see a white birch tree with a fork 
in it, that is just in line with the sharp rock. 
It’s easy to remember. You say, ‘ sharp rock 
and split birch to the right.’ Then you look 
at another angle and see an old snag that 
exactly lines up with a dead fir tree, broken 
off about forty feet up. You fix those two 
points in your mind and you have it. No 
matter what the weather conditions are, as 
long as you can see your four points, you are 
all right. When you get to a spot where the 
birch tree is behind the old snag, and the snag 
lines with the fir tree you are bound to be 
exactly over the spot. I’ll go this afternoon 
and spot my points, and to-night we’ll try our 
luck. We’ve got a good moon and can see our 
points all right.” 


CHAPTER XVII 


FLAMES FROM THE SEA 

Just as the moon, having reached the tree- 
tops, was casting huge black shadows across 
the water, the boys in their rowboat pushed off 
silently from the shore. 

“ We'll head her straight out for a few 
hundred yards," Johnny whispered as he bent 
his back to the oars, “ then we’ll turn and go up¬ 
stream: not so likely to be seen from the bank 
that way." 

For a time nothing was to be heard save the 
all but inaudible dip-dip of the oars. “ Now," 
breathed Johnny, as he lifted one oar and 
allowed the other to drag, “ half about and 
away — " 

His whisper was cut short by something 
that had struck his eye: the flare of a light 
across the surface of the water. 


133 


134 


The Black Schooner 


“ What’s that gleam ?” he muttered. 

“ Where? ” 

“ Behind the point, looks like. Mighty queer 
at this time of night.” 

“ Some ship’s light maybe.” 

“ Can’t be; too high and bright. Tell you 
what, we’ll row out a few boat-lengths farther. 
We may be able to see it then.” 

The boat swung about into the course it had 
just left; then for a time there came the dip 
of oars. 

“It’s just off the point!” Johnny suddenly 
exclaimed excitedly. “ It’s a ship on fire. Look 
at her blaze! Swing about. It’s not so far. 
We might be of some assistance, and anyway 
it’s a sight worth going miles to see.” 

Redoubling their efforts they sent the light 
rowboat skimming away across the water to¬ 
ward the spot where great flares of flame leaped 
skyward. 

The point was a long, narrow finger of land 
that reached out into the bay. The cabin in 
which the boys lived was at the base of this 


Flames From the Sea 


135 


point. To the right of it up the bay was the 
old fish-house in which the Dust Eater was 
stored. Back of that, far away in the woods, 
was the “ cabin of eight smokes ” while up 
the river, on the edge of that same wide stretcli 
of evergreen forest, was the sawmill over 
which Nelsie’s father acted as foreman. 

As Johnny’s mind took in the situation, he 
told himself that it was a fine thing that this 
fire was on the sea and not on the land. “ For, 
he reasoned, “ even though the wind is off- 
shore, any fire in the evergreen forest would 
back-fire its way down the point; then it 
would spread in every direction until nothing 
remained of cabins, fish-house, or mill.” 

Pant, who had a vivid imagination and a 
keen mind for adventure and who all his life 
long had had a desire to witness a fire at sea, 
kept glancing over his shoulder. As he did so 
he fancied that he saw things happening at 
the ship’s rail and upon the sea near the ship. 
Now passengers and crew crowded the rail. 
Now boats were loaded and lowered. Long 


136 


The Black Schooner 


sweeping oars flashed in the light of the burn¬ 
ing ship as the lifeboats put away. In his 
fancy he saw one or two passengers left aboard 
and in his fancy too drove the frail row¬ 
boat alongside to rescue them. The fact was 
that there was little but fancy in all that he 
seemed to see, for the ship, if she were a ship, 
was some distance out to sea. 

“ Best we can do is to get a closer look at 
her,” Johnny murmured at last. “ She’s so 
far out that we can’t possibly get near her be¬ 
fore she sinks.” 

Pant was silent. They had swung part way 
toward the end of the point. “ Say,” he ex¬ 
claimed suddenly, “ that’s not behind the point. 
It’s right against the end of the point, and 
unless I miss my guess it’s much closer than 
you think. Pull hard. Perhaps we can reach 
her yet. She may be only some gasoline 
schooner and we might get some salvage off 
her before she sinks. But where’s her crew? 
Looks like you could see their boat.” 

Still rowing, but with his head turned to 


Flames From the Sea 


137 


gaze across the sea, Johnny swept the black 
waters with his eyes. “ Looks like the gleam 
of a mast off to the right,” he murmured. “ I 
can’t really tell though.” 

More moments of silent laboring at the oars 
followed. Then again Pant glanced backward. 
This time he dropped his oars to turn square 
about and stare. Then, with a sudden exclama¬ 
tion, he seized the oars again. 

“Pull! Pull hard!” he groaned. “That’s 
not a ship nor yet a small schooner. It’s only 
a rowboat piled high with inflammable rubbish 
and it’s drifting on shore with the tide. In a 
little while, if we don’t stop it, it will be against 
the beach, against that bank of dwarf yellow 
pines that line the shore, and that means a fire, 
a land fire, a forest fire that we will not soon 
forget.” 

One startled glance over his shoulder told 
Johnny that Pant’s last conclusion was the 
correct one. Indeed, so close were they by this 
time that they were able to make out the out¬ 
lines of the boat’s prow. 


138 The Black Schooner 

“ Pull! Pull!” shouted Pant as he strained 
at the oars until it seemed they would snap. 

Bending far foreward, Johnny joined him 
in the long, strong sweep that fairly lifted the 
boat from the water. There followed the short, 
quick laboring breathing of boys who are 
putting every ounce of their energy into a task. 

A glance backward told them they were 
making headway. But so was the burning 
boat. As if drawn by an invisible hand it 
came nearer, ever nearer the shore. Now it 
seemed fifty yards away, now twenty-five, now 
fifteen. The gap between the boats grew nar¬ 
rower and narrower. Would they make it? 
Johnny’s mind was tormented with this ques¬ 
tion. Then of a sudden, a new question came 
to him. He spoke it out loud. 

“ Pant,” he puffed, “ what are we going to 
do when we get to her ? Look at her now, damn 
ing up like an oil tank. Wouldn’t dare go near 
her; our own boat would catch fire.” 

“ Might swim in and attach a line to her, 
then tow her away.” 


Flames From the Sea 


139 


“ Never could. It’d set your hair on fire; 
burn you to a crisp. ‘‘Anyway,” Johnny said 
suddenly, as he threw down his oars with a 
gesture of despair, “it’s no use; we’ve lost. 
There goes the first pine tree.” 

It was all too true. Even as he spoke there 
came a sound of a sudden mighty wind, a wild 
whish-o-o-o as a tree, lighted by the heat from 
the boat, burst all aflame like a coal oil torch. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


FIRE FIGHTERS 

Even as they looked, a second tree caught fire, 
then another and another. The leap of flames 
from bottom to top of a tree was like a single 
flash of light. Trees followed in such quick 
succession that the rush of their going was like 
the exhaust of some tremendous locomotive — 
whish-whish-whish. 

For a full moment, fascinated by the mag¬ 
nificent spectacle that turned night into day and 
painted the waters of the bay black as ink, the 
boys sat with mouths open, staring. 

Pant was the first to gain his senses. “ It’s 
treachery,” he exclaimed, “ treachery in the 
night. Someone set that boat afire, meaning 
it to drift ashore and burn us out. But come on, 
there’s a chance of fighting it.” He dropped 

to his place and seized the oars. 

140 


141 


Fire Fighters 

“How?” Johnny asked, incredulous. 

“ There are open trails across the point, two 
of them, used as portages once — we’ll clear 

’em and block the fire there. We’ve got an axe 

* 

in the boat. Come on, pull, pull as if for your 
life.” 

Again they strained at the oars while 
Johnny’s mind went over the whole situation. 
After weighing carefully the possibilities of 
their winning the fight against the flames that 
threatened not alone their cabin but their sea¬ 
plane and the mill up the river as well, he con¬ 
cluded that they had a fighting chance. 

“ Lucky thing the wind’s offshore,” he told 
himself. “ If it wasn’t for that we wouldn’t 
have a chance. As it is, she’s beating it back 
from the bay mighty fast. There’s water on 
both sides of her now and will be for perhaps 
a half hour, but after that, when she gets into 
the main body of the timber, man, oh, man, how 
she will spread! You’d think the rain of yes¬ 
terday would hold her back, but the wind has 
whipped the trees all dry and the needles are 


142 The Black Schooner 

like tinder. Looks like other folks would see 
the light of the flames but maybe they won’t 
until it is too late. It’s night and most folks 
are asleep.” 

“ Wonder who played that dirty trick,” he 
said to himself after a time. “ Might have been 
those fellows who have been stealing timber. 
Think their trick is off maybe, so they’ll have 
their revenge. Might be that fellow with the 
Black Schooner; he may be trying to hide some¬ 
thing. Might be — ” 

His reflections were cut short by a word from 
Pant, but he was destined to remember that last 
mental suggestion many hours later when a 
discovery of some importance was made. 

“ We better leave the boat here and swim 
ashore,” Pant suggested. “ I think the first 
trail is right about there on the shore. We can 
anchor the boat here; it might get caught and 
burned up if we brought it ashore. If we get 
stuck we can swim out to her and get awayT 

Without comment Johnny seized the anchor 
and tossed it into the water. Pant took up the 


Fire Fighters 143 

axe. “ Guess that’s about all we can use of this 
outfit,” he murmured. “ Lucky we brought it 
along.” With that, he removed his shoes, tied 
them to his belt, then plunged into the sea and 
went along plowing toward shore. 

Once on shore, they lost little time in locating 
the old portage which had undoubtedly at one 
time been used as a road for hauling logs across 
the point when rough weather beyond the point 
made it impractical to bring them around in 
a boom. That the road had not been used for 
at least three or four years was proved by the 
shoulder-high pine and fir trees that were grow¬ 
ing here and there in the middle of it. 

“ We’ll have to cut out that undergrowth and 
throw it back,” Pant explained, wielding the 
axe as he spoke. “ You toss ’em back; I’ll dp 
the cutting.” 

For some time only the thwack-thwack of the 
axe, the swish of branches and the distant, in¬ 
distinct rush and roar that they knew all too well 
was the onrushing fire, disturbed the silence of 
the night. 


/ 


144 


The Black Schooner 


But now, as they began catching glimpses of 
leaping flames through the thick timber, there 
came little signs of movement in the dead 
needles near their feet and in the branches above 
them. A great gray owl flopped lazily by them; 
a score of pack rats scampered across the trail; 
some creature that made a loud thump-thump- 
thump on the ground passed to their left. 

“ Deer,” whispered Pant. “ They’ve been hid¬ 
ing on the point. Whole little old wild world’s 
moving out. I don’t blame them, either. May 
be moving ourselves only too soon. But we’ll 
fight it out here as long as we can. If it beats 
us here we’ll take another stand at the other 
trail farther back. The other trail’s really the 
best of the two; it’s wider. But we can’t afford 
to pass any chance up. We’re like an army 
digging in at one point and attempting to hold 
a position, then if it don’t prove safe, moving 
back.” 

He glanced back over the broad trail they 
had left behind them. “ A hundred yards 
more,” he muttered, “ but she’s coming fast',’ 


145 


Fire Fighters 

and,” he added a bit anxiously, “ the branches 
above us come awful close together. Once the 
fire leaps across we’re done for, at least at this 
point.” 

Again the thwack-thwack of the axe was 
blended with the ever-increasing crackle and 
roar of the fire. The heat was noticeable now. 
Pant was perspiring freely. His face was red 
as a sunset. 

“ Just a little farther,” he puffed. “ There’s 
just one thing in our favor: The ground’s 
damp and the fire won’t creep across the trail 
on the surface.” 

Three minutes more, with the breath of flames 
hot upon their cheeks, they fought their way 
toward the other shore; then with a wild whoop 
of triumph Johnny cast the last scrub tree into 
the sea. “ There! ” he exclaimed exultantly. 
“ That’s all we can do. We’ll have to leave the 
rest to luck.” 

“ And tough luck I believe, at that.” Pant 
threw himself face down upon the ground to 
avoid the heat. “ It’s hotter than I thought 


146 


The Black Schooner 


it would be. I’m afraid it will leap the gap. 

“ What was that?” he sprang to his feet a 
second later. Glancing down the trail that 
was now as light as day, he was horrified to 
see a great, tawny cat standing not ten yards 
from him. The creature’s eyes reflected the red 
glow of the flames till they seemed afire them¬ 
selves. 

“ A lion! ” he breathed, too startled to move 
from his tracks. “A mountain lion!” 

For a second the creature, crouching for a 
spring, seemed undecided whether to leap upon 
the boy’s back or to spring away to the right 
in the brush. It was a dramatic moment. Pant 
felt his hair stand on end as his feet grew into 
things of lead and he stood as if driven into 
the earth like a post. 

At last with a savage hiss the creature turned 
and leaped out of sight. 

“ Wow! ” gasped Pant in relief. “ He’s 
moving, too; and I can’t say I’m sorry.” 

The next second brought him a new and 
terrible thought. “ Come on,” he called 


Fire Fighters 147 

hoarsely. “ We’re beat here. We’ll have to 
try it farther back.” 

It was true. The fire had made greater head¬ 
way on the farther side of the point and had 
already reached the gap when a bit of mad 
perversity on the part of the wind sent a whirl¬ 
ing eddy of air directly into the flames and 
tossed a red ball of fire across the gap. The 
far side was aflame in an instant. 

“ I don’t see any use trying the other trail,” 
grumbled Johnny in a black funk of despond¬ 
ency. “ We were beat so easy; how can we 
hope to win next time?” 

“ Can’t tell,” smiled the indomitable Pant 
grimly as he seized his axe and broke away the 
brush. “You never can tell. Help may come. 
We must fight to the last ditch.” 


CHAPTER XIX 


THE MASKED MAN 

Fortunately the wind freshened at this time. 
Coming from the land, as it did, it had a 
tendency to hold the fire in check. Still, as 
they struggled through underbrush, fought their 
way through briar patches, or scurried be¬ 
neath gigantic spreading pines, they heard 
again and again the startling whee-o-o-o of a 
particularly large conifer as the fire shot up¬ 
ward among its branches. They knew that it 
could be but a matter of moments until the fire 
reached the second portage. Even Pant de¬ 
spaired of saving the forest by clearing the trail 
of underbrush. However, being of a hopefiri 
disposition and bulldog courage, he hoped 
against hope that something might happen to 
avert the catastrophe. 

As he struggled forward, his mind went over 

148 


The Masked Man 


149 


just what such a fire must mean — the total 
destruction of all their plans as well as their 
equipment, for the fire would blot out all clues 
save the safe at the bottom of the river. Their 
hiding place would be gone. Their means of 
locomotion, in case of a long voyage, would be 
gone, too; the fish-house and Dust Eater would 
almost certainly be burned, for the wind had 
veered slightly in that direction and would 
carry the fire thither at a terrific rate. “ We 
might be able to make a dash for it and get the 
plane out/’ he told himself grimly, “ but more 
likely we’d get burned to a crisp undertaking 
it.” 

If the fire was not checked the mystery of 
“ eight smokes ” would be a mystery no longer. 
A charred mass of logs and twisted sheet iron 
hues would be all there was left of it. 

Not only would all their plans be brought to 
an end but Johnny’s new-found friends at the 
mill would be homeless and jobless; the mill 
and the mill town would burn together. “ And,” 
he told himself, “ all this wonderful virgin 


150 


The Black Schooner 


forest belonging to the man who is employing 
us will be destroyed. What a pity! how many 
hundred of homes where happy families live, 
where children dance about while mothers sing, 
could be made from these very trees? And all 
that gone because someone’s black heart 
prompts him to wreak vengeance upon some 
other person.” 

As he finished these gloomy thoughts he found 
himself breaking through the timber to the sec¬ 
ond road. To his great joy he found this a 
very much wider road and more recently 
traveled. 

“ Not so much work here,” he told Johnny 
hopefully. “We may make it yet.” 

“Think so?” was Johnny’s only comment, 
as, seizing the axe, he prepared to do the chop¬ 
ping that he might relieve Pant’s blistered 
hands. 

For fifteen minutes they worked along in 
grim silence. Again the heat of the fire was 
upon their cheeks. The wind had lulled. The 
fire was coming forward by leaps and bounds. 


The Masked Man 


151 


Just as they began to despair, there came a sud¬ 
den on-rush of wind from land. So strong was 
it that it appeared to seize the flames and cast 
them back until they stood a fiery wall against 
the sky. 

“ Like Moses’ pillar of fire,” Johnny told 
himself in an awed whisper. 

Instantly his mind was diverted by something 
that was happening in the uncleared portion of 
the trail just before him. Had he caught the 
gleam of fire through the branches? It did not 
seem possible, yet it was true. There was a 
second fire crackling up there. 

“ It’s no use,” he exclaimed, casting down 
the axe. “ The villains are setting fire all 
about us. We’ll do well if we escape with our 
lives.” He turned and was about to flee down 
the open trail when Pant seized him by the arm. 
“ Hold on,” he exclaimed. “ That fire’s all on 
the inside of the trail. Looks like back-fire to 
me. Someone’s come to the rescue.” 

“ Back-fire! ” exclaimed Johnny. “ What 
blockheads we have been! Back-fire’s the very 


152 


The Black Schooner 


stuff. The wind is just right. We’ll light the 
trees along the trail. The wind will hold the 
fire off so it won’t leap the gap, and you don’t 
get the terrible accumulated heat of that bank 
of fire coming down the point.” 

He began searching his pockets for his match 
box. The instant he found it he started lighting 
tufts of dry grass and tossing them into dense 
masses of pine needles. Some of them went 
out; others caught and soon there was a line of 
fires flashing all along the trail. 

Pant’s task was that of watching these fires 
to make sure that no sparks leaped the inter¬ 
vening space and lighted on the wrong side of 
the trail. A dozen times he stamped out little 
patches of fire in the center of the trail and 
once, in the nick of time, he slashed down a 
young fir tree that was all ablaze and cast it 
into the burning mass beyond. 

The fires they had started grew in intensity 
and volume. The heat was rapidly becoming 
unbearable. Coming to a narrow brook that 
crossed the trail, Johnny dampened his hand- 


The Masked Man 153 

kerchief and fastened it over his face. Pant 
followed his example. 

As they at last reached the beach once more 
and looked back they saw a continuous line of 
fire on one side of the trail but none on the 
other. 

“ Wonder who our friends are,” said Pant. 
“ Someone from the mill, I suppose. Prob¬ 
ably came down in a motor boat. Well, I’ll 
say they came just in time.” 

“ We’d better work our way back along the 
trail if we can stand the heat,” suggested 
Johnny. “ Sparks might leap across and undo 
all our work yet.” 

To their great relief they found the heat al¬ 
ready somewhat abated. The trees next to 
the trail had burned and the fire was rushing 
on to meet the conflagration that was creeping 
toward it from the bay. 

“ Soon they’ll meet,” exclaimed Pant in high 
glee; “ then watch for a wonderful display!” 

Working their way back along the trail they 
stamped out any tongues of flame that seemed 


154 The Black Schooner 

inclined to attempt the crossing of the trail. 

So intent were they upon their task that they 

all but ran into a tall man who like themselves 

wore a mask to protect his face from the flames. 

He was patrolling his share of the trail. 

Apparently taken by surprise, he halted in 

the trail, then, half turning about, muttered: 

“ Close call. Very close.” 

At that he faced squarely about and walked 

rapidly in the direction whence he came. 

“ Well I’ll be darned!” whispered Johnny. 

“ What do you think of that? ” 

* 

Pant did not answer. He was watching every 
motion of the stranger, taking in every detail 
of his appearance and dress. 

“ I’ll know him if I see him again,” was his 
comment at last. “ Think mebby I’ve seen him 
before, once, mebby twice, but I’m not sure. 
Did you notice how long and gray his hair 
was?” 

“ No,” said Johnny, “ can’t say I did. My 
notion was that it was Nelsie’s father. He 
acted peeved at us because he thought perhaps 


The Masked Man 


155 


we set the fire by some clumsy accident.” 

“ Nothing like that/’ smiled Pant. “ Nelsie’s 
dad wouldn’t have come alone. He’d have the 
whole mill force with him.” 

“ Anyway,” Johnny said, “ you’ve got to hand 
it to him; he knows how to fight fires.” 

“Look!” exclaimed Pant breathlessly. “Oh! 
Look! ” 

The sight that met their gaze as they turned 
their faces toward the bay was one they would 
never forget. The two columns of fire, one 
that had gained volume through long burning 
and the other by being urged forward by the 
wind, had advanced until like two armies they 
had met. 

With a roar that could be heard for miles, 
the fire leaped hundreds of feet in air. Seem¬ 
ing to seize bushes, branches, whole trees, and 
tear them from their moorings, it sent them 
rocketing through space to drop at last sizzling 
in the bay. 

It was all over in a moment. The point, 
stripped of its vegetation, lay black and red 


156 


The Black Schooner 


beneath the yellow light of the moon. The 

fire was checked; the vast stretches of timber 

✓ 

were saved. 

“ Let’s wander down this way,” said Johnny. 
“ We may have a chance to thank our tall 
friend yet.” 

They tramped the length of the trail, but 
though they went to the very water’s edge, 
then up and down the beach, they found no 
trace of him. 

“ Like some king in hiding,” Pant smiled, 
“he has vanished.” 


CHAPTER XX 


FIRES THAT GLEAM IN THE NIGHT 

The forest fire was now well under control. 
Like some city burned by destroying soldiers, 
the whole point still gleamed out in the dark¬ 
ness. Four great yellow pine trunks, seeming 
the pillars of a vast ruined cathedral, glowed 
red to their very tops. The lesser trees, 
thousands of them, stood flashing back the 
light like candles for the bier of their more 
ancient brothers, the yellow pines, which for 
all one knows might have lived a year for each 
red glow that surrounded them. 

“ Pity to waste so much timber,” said Johnny. 

“ Yes, but think what it might have been!” 
said Pant. “ Tell you what,” he exclaimed, “ if 
I only had a violin Pd re-enact the picture of 

Nero playing while Rome burned.” 

157 


158 The Black Schooner 

“ Here’s a mouth organ,” grinned Johnny. 
“ Do the best you can.” 

Pant took the despised little musical instru¬ 
ment and out from it sent such weird and en¬ 
chanting tones as Johnny in all his experiences 
had never heard. Now it rose like a wild 
trump of warriors exulting over the fall of 
their enemies’ most beautiful city, and now it 
fell to the low mourn of those who sit by ruins 
and lament the loss of a home. Now again it 
was the sweet, low song of woods nymphs, 
who, just beyond the trail that had stopped the 
flames, were, Johnny fancied, rejoicing over the 
preservation of their glorious forest. 

“ Where did you get all that? ” Johnny asked 
when his companion had finished. 

“ Down in the heart of the Cumberland 
Mountains in Kentucky,” Pant smiled. “ Tunes 
that have never been set to music. Wonderful 
melodies they are; telling just how men feel 
when they are left to live a natural life in the 
heart of the wilderness. They are like the 
Scotch songs that Sir Walter Scott tells of in 


Fires That Gleam in the Night 159 

his stories of the Highlanders; the kind that 
were played on the ancient Harp of the North. 
I can’t do them very well. You should hear the 

i 

natives do them, especially when they have a 
violin they have cut out of the heart of some 
great mountain tree with their own hands.” 

“ I should enjoy hearing them,” said Johnny. 
“ And some time you shall,” promised Pant. 
“ It’s a wonderful and strange country, full of 
notions and peculiar ways and as packed with 
weird superstitions as the heart of India itself.” 

“ Yes, let’s go down there sometime,” said 
Johnny. “ But first we must solve the many 
mysteries that hover over this cape and bay. 
Who put the safe down by the split rock? What 
does it contain? What is the Black Schooner? 
Who is its master? What sort of power has it? 
Who is stealing timber from the mill? What 
is the cabin of ‘ eight smokes’ ? Whose is it? 
Who set this fire to-night? Why did he do it? ” 
“ Ten questions,” grinned Pant. “ Just like 
an examination.” 

“ Yes,” said Johnny, “ and if I had to pass 


160 


The Black Schooner 


the examination at the present time I’m afraid 
I wouldn’t make a passing grade.” 

“ Nor I,” admitted Pant. 

“ But we’ll stick till we can.” 

“ We will,” said Pant, gripping Johnny 
warmly by the hand. 

Nothing remained but to watch the fire, to 
see that no sparks were blown across the trail 
to set a fire beyond. Once or twice the wind 
sent an eddy of these sparks soaring high. This 
gave the boys anxious moments but resulted in 
no new conflagrations. Toward morning a 
slow drizzle set in which wet them to the skin 
but at the same time soon reduced the fire to 
a mass of cold black charcoal and left them 
free to seek shelter in their cabin. 

“ Grub,” said Johnny drowsily, as he warmed 
himself bv the newlv kindled fire, “ then hours 
of sleep. After that we go after the safe in 
the split rock.” 

“ Only hope it’s still there,” said Pant, 
wrinkling his brow. 

“ Of course it will be. Why shouldn’t it? ” 


Fires That Gleam in the Night 161 

“ Why should it have been there in the first 
place? ” 

“ That/’ said Johnny, “ is just" what we are 
going to try to find out.” 


CHAPTER XXI 


THE LIGHT THAT FAILED 

That night, just after dark, the boys found 
themselves all set for a great adventure. 

“Got the rope and tackle in the boat?” 
asked Pant. 

“Yep — battery, wire, light, everything. Hop 
in and we’re off.” 

Pant leaped into the boat; Johnny shoved her 
off and they were away, up the river in the 
night. 

The moon had not yet risen; fleeting clouds 
obscured the sky. It was a fit night for 
adventure. 

“Just right!” whispered Pant, as he leaned 
forward in an attempt to pierce the dense 
darkness. 

“ Have to use a flashlight to locate our steer¬ 
ing points,” Johnny whispered back. 

162 


163 


The Light That Failed 

Steering more by his sense of direction than 
by sight, Johnny drove the craft to the point 
in the river which he supposed to be directly 
above the split rock. 

“ Now the flash,” he ordered. “ Make it 
short and snappy. We don’t know who’s lurk¬ 
ing about.” 

A gleam of light flashed across the water: 
Pant’s flashlight. It darted here and there, 
everywhere, for one tense second, then blinked 
out. 

u Two boat-lengths upstream. Make it four; 
we’ve drifted a little. Two to the right.” 

Johnny pulled at the oars in silence. 

“ Now, again,” he breathed. 

Once more the light gleamed. 

“Fine!” whispered Pant. “No, we drifted 
too far — that’s good. Over she goes! ” 

There followed an almost inaudible splash as 
the anchor went over. 

A second later they felt the b*oat tugging at 
the anchor, felt, too, the slow downstream drift, 
and felt sure that in another moment they would 


164 


The Black Schooner : 


know wheher or not they had reckoned correctly. 

But the moments passed and the boat con¬ 
tinued to drag its anchor. 

“ Missed it,” Pant mumbled. “ We’ll have to 
try again.” 

Once more the light flashed; whispered direc¬ 
tions were given and the boat moved forward. 
Again the anchor fell and drifted. Came again 
the moment of tense waiting and then: 

“ Now, here we are. Let’s have that light.” 

With deft fingers Pant adjusted the electric 
wires. For an instant a bright light shone in 
the bottom of the boat; the next, it was snapped 
off. 

“ It works,” he muttered. “ Got your tackle? 
Ready? ” 

“ Yep.” 

Seizing an object from the bottom of the 
boat, Pant dropped it into the water. This he 
lowered away by an insulated wire until it was 
ten feet below the boat. He touched a button. 
There came a gleam from the depths below. A 
yellow ball of light shone there. 


The Light That Failed 165 

“ Works perfectly,” he whispered. “ Over 
you go! ” 

Johnny was poised for the plunge, when there 
suddenly came to his ears the faint click-click 
of steel rods working in perfect unison. 

The next instant a black bulk seemed to loom 
straight above him. 

With a shrill whisper of fright and warning, 
he dropped flat on his back in the boat. 

The next instant the black terror had passed, 
but the rowboat was tossing like an eggshell in 
a tempest. 

Staunch little craft that she was, she rode the 
wild waves like a cutter. A moment later, the 
wake of the black peril having spent itself, the 
two boys sat up rubbing their shins. 

“ Wha — ” Pant breathed. 

“ The Black Schooner! ,y Johnny whispered 
back. 

“ It’s a haunt! ” Pant declared. “ Can’t do 
a thing without her showing up.” 

Johnny did not reply to this; he was looking 
over the side of the boat. 


166 


The Black Schooner. 


“ It’s gone! ” he exclaimed. 

“ What’s gone ? ” 

“ The light’s gone out.” 

“ You’re right,” said Pant. “ It’s broken or 
water-logged or something.” 

“ Well,” said Johnny, with a sigh, “ I guess 
that about ends this affair for the present. 
Can’t do anything without a light. Anyway, I 
don’t fancy the job as long as our old black 
friend is about. Lift the anchor and I’ll row 
you ashore. Guess I’ll go up fhe river and have 
a look at the mill. Nelsie won’t be looking for 
me, but that’s all the better. Think I can get 
a close-up look at the mill without being 
spotted.” 


CHAPTER XXII 


A MYSTERIOUS POWER 

After puttin Pant ashore, Johnny turned 
the prow of his boat upstream, then gave him¬ 
self over to the long, steady, tireless stroke 
which was to carry him miles against the river’s 
swift current to a safe landing close to the 
great mill. 

Three hours later he was dragging his craft 
ashore. Before him, as he stood there for a 
minute after beaching his boat, he saw a nar¬ 
row, hidden eddy of the river. Behind him was 
a dense thicket of second-growth pine, fir and 
tamarack. 

“ I guess the boat’ll be safe enough here until 
I come back,” he mumbled. At that he turned 
and began searching along the shore for some 
logging road or trail that might lead him in¬ 
land. He was not long in finding a logging 
• 167 


168 


The Black Schooner. 


road and, by great good fortune, this led directly 
to his desired destination, the mill. 

As it was now after midnight, the place was 
as still as a tomb. Only the all-but-silent rush 
of water in the river whispered of the mighty 
din and clatter that went on here by day. Even 
old Mac, the incompetent watchman, seemed 
to have vanished. 

“ Spooky place/’ Johnny whispered to him¬ 
self, as he dodged from the shadow of a great 
pile of waste to dart for the cover of timber- 
piles where, tier on tier, millions of feet of 
lumber lay stacked. 

Creeping along in these shadows, he at last 
came to the mill itself. A giant open shed, 
devoid of doors, gates, locks or keys, it was 
open to his inspection. 

Accepting this implied invitation, he crept 
within. Here the atmosphere took on a more 
ghostly look. Each upright beam seemed a man. 
Over each tongue-and-groover and each planer, 
he fancied he saw phantom men bending over 
their work, men who had labored here and 


A Mysterious Power 169 

passed on never to return. Perhaps even these 
machines had taken their lives. Such was often 
the misfortune of a mill hand. 

Johnny was not here, however, to dream of 
ghosts. He had come for a purpose. He meant 
to get the lie of everything, so that if occasion 
demanded he might find his way about in this 
labyrinth with ease. 

Suiting his actions to this purpose, he left 
the planing-room, once more to come out into 
the moonlight. Here he hurried along the edge 
of the mill pond where, like so many black 
crocodiles, the saw logs lay sleeping. 

Having rounded this, he came to a low, nar¬ 
row shed of sheet iron. 

“ Power house,” he murmured. 

No smokestacks towered above this building. 
The power that turned these many wheels and 
set a hundred saws singing came from a fall in 
the river, a hundred miles away. There elec¬ 
trical power was generated to be carried over 
high tension wires to this power house where 
three great electric motors set it to work. This 


170 


The Black Schooner. 


electrical power was far safer than steam, the 
danger of fire being entirely eliminated. 

“ Great idea,” Johnny thought to himself. 
“ They call it white coal, this power. They — ” 

His reflections were suddenly cut short. Had 
he seen a dark shadow flit past him? He 
thought so. Flattening himself against the wall, 
he waited for he knew not what. 

His heart thumped so loudly, he thought it 
would begin a tattoo on the sheet iron side of 
the power house. 

Seconds passed and nothing happened. A 
minute went by, another and another, and no 
sound came. 

“ Just my imagination,” he told himself as 
he finally relaxed his vigil to creep around the 
corner of the building. 

Once he had come to the door of the building, 
his assurance left him. The door was ajar. 

“ Surely they would not leave it unlocked 
all night,” he told himself. 

Again he flattened himself against the wall 
to stand at alert attention. 


A Mysterious Power 171 

No sound, save the swish of waters, came to 
his ears. 

At last he pushed the door wide open and 
peered within. Three black bulks loomed be¬ 
fore his eyes — the motors. Aside from these, 
and a rack of tools, the room contained nothing. 
On the wall was a black granite plate. From 
the surface of this, lighted by the moonlight, 
the faces of dials and indicators gleamed, while 
the handles of six knife-switches pointed 
straight at him. 

“ Open, as they should be,” he told himself. 
“ Mighty strange, though, that all this should 
be unlocked at this time of night. Suppose a 
fellow ought to tell them. It’s dangerous. 
What if some child came this way? Might be 
electrocuted. What if some mischief-maker 
threw in the switches, set the motors going, 
throw the whole mill running like mad. It 
might tear the thing to pieces.” 

His first impulse was to awaken someone and 
tell him. 

“ But then,” he told himself, “ first question 


172 


The Black Schooner 


they’d ask would be: ‘ What you prowlin’ around 
here this time of night for? ’ And what’d I say, 
Huh ? Guess I’d better let them take the chance. 
It’s their mill, not mine.” 

Turning, he hurried from the room to re¬ 
sume his skulking along in the shadows. He 
soon came to the shed where was housed the 
huge traveling platform that carried the eight- 
foot logs to the giant saws that sang a merry 
song as they ate their way through the hearts 
of the fallen giants. 

“ I’d just like to stand on that platform,” he 
told himself, “ and imagine I’m controlling the 
levers, sending the logs forward, setting those 
saws singing. Just — ” 

He had stepped upon the platform; had taken 
three steps forward, when, to his utter astonish¬ 
ment, he caught the low hum of a revolving 
saw. The next instant the platform shot ahead 
with a sudden lurch that threw him sprawling 
on his face. 

Madly he scrambled to his feet. Not five 
yards ahead of him a great saw was cutting air. 


/ 


A Mysterious Power 173 

He was in its path. A moment more and he 
would have been sawn asunder. 

In wild consternation he leaped from the 
moving tram and, dashing out of the shed, once 
more sought shelter in the shadows. 

“ Now, I wonder,” he breathed. “ Someone 
turned on the power. Did they know I was on 
the tram? Did they do that in hopes of getting 
me?” 

Being a fellow of action, he wasted little 
time in thought. 

“ Might get a glimpse of the villain,” he told 
himself. Dashing down a long lane of shadows, 
he came once more in sight of the power house. 
The door was still ajar. All was darkness and 
silence. 

Fifteen seconds he stood there staring ahead, 
listening to the low hum of the distant saws. 
Then he worked himself cautiously forward to 
peer within the power house. 

He truly expected to see someone within. 
Strong and splendidly trained, he braced him¬ 
self for a battle. 


174 


The Black Schooner. 


No battle followed. To his great amaze¬ 
ment, he found the place as empty as before. 
To his far greater surprise, he saw the knife- 
switches still standing wide open. And yet — 
he could scarcely believe his ears — he caught 
the unmistakable hum of two of the motors. 

“ Huh! ” He started back in astonishment 
and fear. “ Tremendous motion with no elec¬ 
trical current to drive it. How can that be?” 

Once more he darted back into the shadows. 
“ No place for me,” he murmured. “ Big things 
going on here that I know nothing about. And 
yet,” he mused, “ this may be the key to the big 
secret, the great mystery.” 

Even as he mused, the song of many saws, 
which had grown louder each second, suddenly 
ceased. 

At the same time he became conscious of 
some movement on the ground to the right of 
him. A strange gliding sound came to his alert 
ears. 

“ Like a snake,” he told himself. 


A Mysterious Power 175 

The next instant he found himself racing 
after a pair of dark objects that leaped 
wriggling and twisting toward the river's bank. 

“ Wires! ” he exclaimed. 

And now the speed with which they traveled 
redoubled. Race as he might, he could not 
follow them. They were lost to his sight but 
still he raced forward. It was as if he followed 
a phantom. 

Stumbling forward in the darkness, now fall¬ 
ing, now rising to leap on again, he drew up 
at last at the river's bank. And there he caught 
a glimpse of a dark bulk gliding down the river. 

“ The Black Schooner! ” he breathed. “ The 
craft of great and mysterious power. I wonder 
if it was her power that turned all those wheels 
to-night? ” 

For a time he stood lost in reflection; then, 
catching a gleam of light, and realizing that 
the mill hands had been roused by the strange 
phenomenon of the sawmill started in the middle 
of the night, he decided that flight for him was 
the better part of valor. 


176 


The Black Schooner 


Five minutes later he was silently drifting 
down the river in his boat, but his mind was 
far from drifting; it was thronged with many 
strange and wild thoughts. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


THE SAFE IS GONE 

Dawn was breaking the next morning when 
Johnny reached his shack. Pant was asleep. 
After a lunch eaten half in his sleep, he crawled 
between his blankets and was lost to the world. 

It was high noon when he awoke. He found 
Pant sitting at the table tinkering with fine 
wires, lenses and batteries. On his face there 
was a look of determination such as Johnny 
had not seen there for many a long day. 

“ Something unusual has happened/’ was his 
mental comment. 

If something had happened, Pant was not 
the type of fellow to blurt it out at once. In¬ 
deed, he said nothing about anything that had 
happened to him. When he saw that Johnny 
was awake, he turned and drawled, “Well?” 

“ Saw things,” was Johnny’s answer. 


177 


178 The Black Schooner 

“ What? ” 

“A 

“ Elucidate.” 

Johnny proceded to elucidate. When he had 
told the whole story of his visit to the mill, of 
his experiences there, of the mysterious power, 
the elusive wires, and the Black Schooner, he 
turned to Pant with the exclamation: 

“ Now what do you think of that? ” 

“ I think,” said Pant, with an odd sort of 
smile playing about his mouth, “ that it's about 
time we did something. That’s why Pm work¬ 
ing with these trinkets. I want to rig up a 
good, reliable Panther Eye that will give us a 
good, sure look in the dark; also a Crimson 
Flash that will throw fear into man or beast, 
if it chances to fall upon either. When one 
goes on a journey he’s wise to take along his 
whole bag of tricks. He can never tell what’ll 
come in handv.” 

“A journey, did you say?” 

“ I figure we may take one.” 

“ In the Dust Eater? ” 


179 


The Safe Is Gone 

Pant nodded. “ Brought her ’round this 
morning and hid her in a little cove by the 
beach where she’d be handy.” 

“ That’s all right,” smiled Johnny, “ but the 
first thing we’re to do to-day is to lift that safe 
from the split rock, don’t forget that. Black 
Schooner or no Black Schooner, I’m highly in 
favor of dragging it ashore in daylight. 
There’s no telling what valuables it may 
contain.” 

“That’s right; there is no telling.” There 
was a humorous smile on Pant’s face. 

“Why? What’s up?” 

“ Nothing much, except that the safe has 
vanished.” 

“Vanished?” Johnny started from his seat. 

“ Yep. Clean gone. Party that sunk her 
evidently reckoned she wasn’t safe there as long 
as two folks like you and me were about, so 
they lifted her and hid her elsewhere.” 

“You’re sure about it?” 

“ Yep. Up there early this morning,” said 
Pant, tersely. 


180 


The Black Schooner. 


“Well!” exclaimed Johnny. Then he sat 
for a long time in a brown study. 

“ I sent word to Nelsie yesterday,” he said 
at last, “ that I’d be up to-night and we’d climb 
the big fir tree to use the Panther Eye and see 
what we could see.” 

“ That’ll be all right,” said Pant quietly, 
“ providing nothing unusual happens. You see, 
I’m looking for the Black Schooner to do her 
usual nightly roving around midnight, and I 
thought we’d follow her.” 

“Follow her? They’d know we were fol¬ 
lowing and get frightened away!” 

“ I think not. We’ll take the Dust Eater and 
give them a big lead. Then we’ll fly high. We 
can keep track of them by aid of a telescope 
and the Panther Eye. There are plenty of 
planes flying along the coast these days. The 
Black Schooner fellow will never guess that 
we have any interest in him. Anyway, I think 
it’s time we made a move; we’ve got to get some 
of the snarls out of our tangle of mysteries. 
Too many of them get on my nerves. If you 


181 


The Safe Is Gone 

and your little pal, Nelsie, have good luck, you 
can dispose of the log rustlers to-night. Old 
eight smokes can wait. The Black Schooner 
looks like the big hokus-pokus. You never can 
tell, though.” 

“You never can,” agreed Johnny, as he 
swung his feet to the floor and reached for the 
steaming coffee pot. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


“THEY'RE CHOPPING AT OUR TREE” 

Johnny did not tell Nelsie of his strange ex¬ 
periences of the previous night at the mill when 
he met her by the river’s bank after darkness 
had fallen. She, on the other hand, told him 
all that had happened at the mill after he had 
vanished. Certain light sleepers among the 
crew had been awakened by the sound of mov¬ 
ing wheels and whirling saws — the mill was 
in motion, and that at the dead of night. They 
had at once roused their comrades. Some 
rushed to the foreman’s house to beat upon his 
door. Soon all the village was aroused. Rifle 
barrels gleamed in the light of lanterns. Half- 
dressed men, women and children ran every¬ 
where. There was wild confusion. 

“ And what do you think?” Nelsie whispered 
back, as they hastened over the forest path. 

182 


“They’re Chopping at Our Tree” 183 

“ When they got to the mill, not a wheel was 
moving, as these workmen had said they were. 
Not a thing had been harmed. It seemed like 
the men had dreamed it. Only thing is the 
power house was unlocked, and Peterson, the 
engineer, swore that it had been locked. Only 
clues they found were some footprints down by 
the river. One of the men made cement casts 
of those tracks, so maybe they’ll find the man, 
after all.” 

Johnny started as he caught these words. 
“ Might be my footprints,” he said to himself. 
“If they run me down, how’ll I explain it?” 

There were, however, matters of more imme¬ 
diate importance at hand, so, for the time, the 
thought was forgotten. 

When they reached the great fir tree with 
its rustic ladder reaching to the clouds, Johnny 
found himself experiencing a genuine case of 
nerves. He found himself wishing that the fir 
cone that produced that giant of the forest had 
rotted in the bottom of the river. He did not 
want to climb that tree. As he put out a hand 


184 


The Black Schooner. 


to grip the first round of the ladder, he found 
the hand to be shaking violently. 

“ Oh, come now,” he grumbled. “ This won’t 
do. We’ll just have to buck up, that’s all.” 

For one full minute he stood stock-still, while 
the nerves all over his body came to rest, as a 
flutter of falling leaves come to rest after the 
passing of a flurry of wind. 

“ Now,” he breathed, “ that’s better.” 

He had mounted halfway to the first branch 
when off to the right a twig snapped. 

“ Rabbit, or perhaps a deer,” he told him¬ 
self. Nevertheless his heart was thumping 
violently. 

As he rested for a moment on the first branch, 
he caught the clear, long-drawn note of a 
whistle. That, too, came from somewhere off 
to the right. 

“ Deer whistling to his mate,” he told him¬ 
self. Yet, as he said it, he knew that down deep 
in his heart he did not believe a word of it. He 
had heard deer whistle in the forest many times. 
It was like that, yet not quite. There was a 


“They’re Chopping at Our Tree ” 185 

false note which a trained ear, such as Johnny’s, 
could not fail to catch. 

If Nelsie caught these sounds she gave no 
sign of it. She was climbing steadily and was 
now far above her companion. 

“ Humph!” Johnny grunted as he resumed 
his upward climb. “ If there were men about, 
what could they do? Not a thing. If worst 
comes to worst, we can roost in the tree like 
birds until daybreak.” 

He was not going to be able to do that, but 
this he could not know. 

Climbing steadily, he at last reached a seat 
beside the “ little browrn squirrel.” 

“ Oh! ” she exclaimed, as she leaned far for¬ 
ward to part the branches. “ It’s going to be 
wonderful! And did you say I might wear that 
Panther Eye thing to-night?” She gave 
Johnny’s arm a little squeeze. 

“ If the thing works,” Johnny whispered, 
“ and if I see things worth seeing.” 

From his exploration of the previous night, 
Johnny was more competent than on previous 


186 


The Black Schoonet 


occasions to locate the spots he wished to watch. 
The Panther Eye worked perfectly. He kept 
it trained upon the mill pond the greater part 
of the time. Yet, in spite of all this, an hour 
passed, another, and then another without any 
movement about the mill being revealed. 

“ Guess this is not the night/’ he whispered 
to his companion. 

It was nearing midnight. The forest be¬ 
neath them seemed strangely still. Not a breath 
of air stirred the tree-tops. Suddenly out of 
that stillness there came a long-drawn whistle. 

“ What’s that?” Nelsie gripped his arm. 

“ Deer whistling to his mate,” Johnny tried 
to be reassuring. 

“ No, it’s not,” Nelsie whispered quickly. 
“ I’ve heard them many, many times. It’s never 
like that.” 

“ Heard it once before to-night.” 

“ Perhaps we’d better climb down.” 

“ Perhaps.” 

“ Might be dangerous.” 

“ Might.” 


“They’re Chopping at Our Tree” 187 

“Think we’d better try it?” 

“ Guess so.” 

Johnny made a move to swing himself from 
the crow’s-nest seat. At that very instant there 
came a sound that sent a cold chill running up 
his spine and set his hand trembling so he was 
obliged to drop back into the seat. 

“ An axe! ” Nelsie breathed in an awed 
whisper. “ They’re chopping at our tree! ” 


CHAPTER XXV 


TOTTERING TO A FALL 

The first stroke of that axe was all but 
paralyzing. To be perched in a giant tree, a 
hundred and fifty feet in air, then to catch the 
ring of an axe striking at the roots of that tree, 
perhaps at last to bring it thundering to the 
ground, that surely was enough to blanch the 
cheek of the bravest of the brave. 

It was only a matter of seconds, however, 
before Johnny was his usual cool, indomitable 
self. 

“ Humph!” he muttered, “ it’s just some fel¬ 
low's idea of a practical joke; wants to scare 
us. The tree's at least nine feet through. He 
couldn't fell it in four hours. And, if worse 
comes to worst, he surely must know that I 
could jump on his back from ten feet up in the 
tree, then beat his senseless brains out after- 


188 


Tottering to a Fall 189 

wards.” He settled back in his place. “ Let 
him chop; he’ll tire of it soon enough!” 

‘ k Johnny,” breathed the girl, “ are you very, 
very strong? ” 

“ I’m as strong as the average fellow of my 
age and size,” said Johnny soberly. “ What’s 
better, though, I know how to use that strength 
to its very best advantage. I’ve been trained to 
that as few fellows are these days. In these 
times too many people trust to their wits to 
keep them out of danger. It doesn’t always 
work. There come times, even in our tame 
little world, when strength and skill of muscle 
win. Take the great war: Boys needed it 
then; they always will need it.” 

Then, realizing that this little “ brown 
squirrel ” of a companion needed no lecture 
along these lines, Johnny lapsed into silence. 

He started as he felt a sharp grip on his arm, 
and his ears told him that a second axe was now 
ringing in tune with the first. 

“ Two of them,” he murmured. “ That 
means they’ll get through twice as quickly, if 


190 


The Black Schooner. 


they really mean business. But how about it? 
If worse comes to worst, won’t your friends 
down at the mill hear the chopping and come 
to our resuce?” 

“ They won’t hear it,” whispered Nelsie. 
“ Not a single chance. It sounds loud enough 
up here, but that’s because there are but few 
branches to stop the sound, to split it up and 
carry it away. But through the forest it doesn’t 
travel far; not nearly to the mill. Besides, they 
don’t know I’m here. Who cares if a tree is 
chopped down? No one pays any attention to 
that. They can’t carry it away. Might be a 
bee-tree, or they might be after a bobcat. Who 
could guess ? ” 

Again, save for the monotonous chop-chop of 
the axes as they bit into the solid trunk of the 
tree, there was silence. Nelsie was bearing the 
suspense bravely. 

Moments passed; five, ten, fifteen, twenty 
precious minutes of life. Johnny felt the even 
beat of the girl’s heart as she pressed against 
his side. Oddly enough, he found himself 


Tottering to a Fall 191 

wondering how it would seem to have such a 
brave little heart stilled forever. 

At the end of twenty minutes the strain was 
beginning to tell on the nerves of the girl. Her 
breath came more sharply. Her feet swung 
ceaselessly back and forth. Her fingers clasped 
and unclasped. 

“ This,” said Johnny, “ seems to be getting 
serious. I really believe the fools mean busi¬ 
ness, whoever they may be.” 

At that instant he found himself asking 
the question: “ Who are they? I’ve been as¬ 
suming that they are the log rustlers. But are 
they? Would men do such a deed for a few 
thousand feet of timber? Can it be that this 
is the work of the master of the Black 
Schooner? Has he been spying on us, as we 
have him? He was about, watching us when 
we took that jug of poison out at the shack 
of eight smokes — at least, someone was, for 
he sent a silent bullet crashing into the jug. 
Can it be that he has seized this moment to 
rid himself of me? Can it be that he, after 


192 


The Black Schooner. 


all, is the brains of the timber-stealing gang, 
and that the mystery of the Black Schooner, 
the eight smokes, the safe in split rock, and 
the strange doings about the mill at night, are 
all one? ” 

He found no satisfactory answer to these 
problems. Only one thing seemed clear: 
These choppers, whoever they were, and 
whether few or many, meant business. For the 
protection of the girl, if not for his own, he 
must go down and fight them. 

“ We’ll have to go down,” he whispered 
quietly, “ I’ll go all the way, and, if it’s neces¬ 
sary, land on their backs. You can stay on the 
% 

lowest branch till the scrap’s over.” 

He felt her hand tremble slightly as it 
gripped his, but in that grip there was a mes¬ 
sage of confidence which went to the very cen¬ 
ter of his heart. 

Noiselessly then they began to slip from limb 
to limb. That he was taking a desperate chance 
Johnny knew right well. He was not armed. 
The men beneath him had axes; probably had 


193 


Tottering to a Fall 

firearms, too. Like some wild creature, he 
might be shot from the tree long before he 
reached the ground. Yet there was no other 
way. He could not see this girl — any girl for 
that matter — in grave danger without trying 
to help her. And if the danger came to her 
because she chanced to be with him, then his 
obligation was still greater. “ And such a 
brave little sport as she is,” he told himself. 

These reflections were cut short by a sound 
that sent a thrill through his being, a sound 
which so unnerved him that for a second he 
was in danger of plunging to his death far 
below, simply because of his inability to re¬ 
tain his grip upon the branch that supported 
him. 

“ The tree!” he gasped. “ It's cracking be¬ 
fore its fall! ” 

For five seconds he clung there irresolute. 
What could it mean? Was the tree hollow and 
rotten at the base? Had this little chopping 
prepared it for a crash to earth? This seemed 
impossible. There could be but one answer: 


194 


The Black Schooner 


The villains, whoever they were, had known of 
this rendezvous of himself and the girl. Feel¬ 
ing sure that he would return they had with a 
great crosscut saw all but severed the tree at 
its base. Trusting night to hide their work, 
as it had, they had waited until their quarry 
was up the tree, then wflth axes they attacked 
the remaining section of the tree’s trunk. Now 
the tree was cracking for a fall. 

Quicker witted than he, the girl had half- 
circled the trunk, and, like a flying-squirrel, was 
about to pass him in a mad, downward flight, 
when he seized her arm. 

“No! No! Not down! There isn’t time! 
It’s sure death. Up! Up! Up as far as you 
can go,” he urged. “ And remember, she falls 
toward the river!” 

Understanding not at all, but trusting im¬ 
plicitly, the girl climbed upward. Amid the 
thundering cracks of the doomed tree, she leaped 
from limb to limb. Passing their crow’s-nest 
seat, she climbed to dizzy heights beyond. 

And Johnny? Had he suddenly gone insane? 


195 


Tottering to a Fall 

He had not. His mind was simply going over 
the grooves which forethought and planning 
had worn there days before. They had but one 
chance — a slim one, but a chance. He was 
taking it. At the top of the tree the limbs were 
young, green, springy, pliable. They must 
reach these before the tree tottered. 

“ She’s going!” he fairly shouted at last. 
Climb out! Out! Get away from the river! 
Out! Out! Until the limb bends. Out, out, 
and cling there! ” 

Beginning to understand, the girl did his bid¬ 
ding. She was ten feet above him. He, too, 
climbed out upon a branch. Clinging there, 
he saw above him her swaying form and for a 
few brief seconds gloried in her courage. 
Then there came a sickening swing, followed 
by a second’s halting in mid-air. Johnny set his 
teeth hard for a wild plunge through space. 
The tree was tottering. In another moment it 
would go thundering down. 


CHAPTER XXVI 


WHIRLED THROUGH SPACE 

He had not long to wait. There was time 
for a fleeting glance at the girl swaying on the 
bough above him, another moment for the grim 
setting of his teeth, then came the breath-taking 
swing which told him they were away. 

Gripping the limb with a strength born of 
fear of sudden death, he felt his body straighten 
out as his feet, like the tail to a comet, cracked 
together in mid-air. The bough was slender 
and limber, but strong. With the pull of his 
entire weight upon it, it did not give. For the 
second, all was well. 

And the girl? One flashing glance above him 
showed her, feet out, hair streaming, face set 
like a marble goddess, clinging to her place. 

It seemed to him that in this mad rush down¬ 
ward his lungs would be torn from their place. 

196 


197 


Whirled Through Space 

His heart stood still. He was paralyzed, not 
with fear, but with the terrible momentum. 
How long would it last? How long could he 
last? Would he lose consciousness, lose his 
grip, plunge to his death? He had hoped that 
the long, wide swing of the bough to which he 
clung would check his final dash to earth. 
Would it? There were smaller trees beneath 
these giants. Would he and the girl be plunged 
into these and hang there, pierced through and 
through, like mice hung to barbed wire by 
shrikes? 

All these questions sped through his mind 
like mad. Then his brain reeled. The terrible 
downward rush through that seemingly end¬ 
less arc in space was dragging the life from 
his body. 

He now saw, heard, felt things as in a dream. 
A dark body dashed past him. The girl? Had 
she lost her hold? He, too, plunged forward. 
The tree had at last reached the ground. Some¬ 
thing cut savagely at his face. He sank low, 
only to leap high in air again. The limb had 


198 


The Black Schooner. 


swung low, but he had not touched earth. The 
limb had sprung upward again. It had saved 
him. The girl had passed him in the same mad 
rush. Had she, too, been saved? 

As the bough again swung downward, he was 
suddenly seized with a great weakness. His 
hands lost their power to grip. His hold re¬ 
laxed and he fell to earth with a shock that 
jarred every bone in his body and at the same 
time brought him back to life. 

Standing up, he tried to fathom the half¬ 
darkness about him. He was surrounded by 
boughs and needles of the fallen tree. 

“Nelsie! Nelsie, are you there ?” 

His own voice sounded strangely hoarse and 
unreal to him. For a minute there came no 
answer. Then, very near and very low: 

“ Yes, yes, I am here. Safe. But do be 
careful; there is danger.” 

Ten seconds Johnny had for rejoicing; then 
there was business at hand. A dark body came 
catapulting at him through the dark. 

The object that came plunging through the 


Whirled Through Space 199 

air at Johnny was a man. He had climbed upon 
the trunk of the fallen tree, and, apparently en¬ 
raged at discovering his would-be victims still 
alive, had plunged straight down, intent upon 
making short work of what remained to be 
done. 

Unfortunately for him, he had no knowledge 
of the nature of the boy he was about to at¬ 
tack. Johnny Thompson had been in many a 
battle of wits and brawn. Now all his strength 
and all his prowess came back to him. His 
rage at such a cowardly assault only added 
strength to his arm and cunning to his brain. 

When the attacking one landed, it was not 
upon Johnny's back but upon a mass of broken 
boughs. With the agility of a tiger, Johnny 
had leaped aside. The man stumbled and fell. 
As he rose to his feet something with the force 
of a trip hammer and the speed of a rifle-ball 
struck his chin. Rising a foot from the ground, 
he shot upward and backward to fade away 
in the heaps of green boughs. Johnny’s good 
right arm had lost none of its force. 


\ 


200 


The Black Schooner. 


But now there came another, and another. 
Bent on Johnny’s destruction, they attacked 
from front and rear. With one of these vil¬ 
lains crashing down upon his back, Johnny 
doubled up for a fall. 

Even in such a position, with such odds 
against him, he was more than a match for 
them. Like a bucking broncho, he bent every 
muscle of arm and leg to throw his assailants 
from him. His right arm shot out and under. 
One assailant felt his neck cracking from the 
terrible grip of a half-nelson, while the other, 
faced by Johnny’s terrible right, hovered over 
in a vain attempt to dash in to his fellow-con¬ 
spirator’s rescue. 

It was all over in a very few minutes. 
Dazed, with noses smashed and muscles aching 
from blows rained upon them by this husky 
young athlete, the remaining opponents were 
glad enough to slink away into the brush. 

Once more Johnny had time to think of 
Nelsie. He called softly, then waited for an 


answer. 


Whirled Through Space 201 

“ Fm here — but I — I can’t get up,” came 
back in a hoarse whisper. 

Quickly wild forebodings flooded Johnny’s 
mind: Nelsie had been seriously injured; her 
limbs were broken; perhaps even worse, her 
back. She was paralyzed. 

This fear held him spellbound for a time. 
Then, with a stout heart, he went bounding 

through the brush. 

# ■ 4 

“ Where are you hurt?” he asked, as he 
bent over her. “ Is — is it your legs or your 
back? ” 

“ It — it’s my legs,” she whispered, “ but 
they’re really not hurt. I — I landed like a 
butterfly. But — but, some way they won’t 

hold me up.” 

“ Only weak from fright, thank God! ” 

murmured Johnny. “ Your strength will soon 
come back all right.” 

Nelsie silently nodded assent. 

At that he lifted her and carried her carefully 
far back into depths of the forest, where 

he was sure they would not again be attacked. 


202 


The Black Schooner. 


“ What a night! ” he exclaimed, as he dropped 
down beside her. 

“ But — but what’s this? ” exclaimed the girl, 
“Why, it’s blood on my hand! You — you’re 
hurt! ” 

“Why, no, I guess not,” said Johnny cheer¬ 
fully. “ They never even touched me.” 

He put a hand to his cheek, to discover for 
the first time that his face was bleeding. 

“It’s nothing serious,” he told her; “just 
some scratches where the fir branches cut me 
as they shot past me on that last wild plunge.” 

Strengthened by another’s need, the girl rose 
unsteadily to her feet and insisted upon walk¬ 
ing to a near-by brook, where she washed the 
clotted blood from his cuts and stopped the 
bleeding with dry moss. 

“I — I guess it’s really not serious,” she 
whispered as she felt over the cuts carefully, 
“ but — but it might have been — ” 

“ There are a lot of things that might have 
been,” chuckled Johnny, “ but they weren’t, 
and we’ve that to be thankful for. And that 


203 


Whirled Through Space 

reminds me — I have a date with my partner. 
We were to have taken a little trip in a sea¬ 
plane. I may be too late, but I’ll have to try 
for it. This is my crowded night.” 

“ Oh! Must you go down the river? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Then let me take you. My father’s small 
motorboat is just around a bend in the river. 
I’m strong now; I’ll have you down there in 
a jiffy.” 

“ I suppose,” said Johnny, as they went scout¬ 
ing down a trail in the dark, “ that we ought to 
rout out the entire mill force and go after 
those rascals who tried to murder us. 

“Did you cripple any of them?” Nelsie 
asked eagerly. 

“ I think not seriously. Marked them, 
though.” 

“ Then we could never find them in the night; 
the forest is too thick, and there are too many 
places to hide. Track them better in the morn¬ 
ing. Leave that to me and my daddy.” 

“All right,” said Johnny. 


204 


The Black Schooner. 


Nelsie now led the wav down the bank of 
the river and around the bend to a secret 
landing. 

The next moment they were stepping into a 
trim little motor boat. The motor began its 
lively pop-pop-pop, and they went shooting down 
the river. 


CHAPTER XXVII 


A CLUE GIVEN 

Scarcely a quarter of an hour had elapsed 
when they rounded a sharp bend in the river 
to enter a half-hidden cove. To Johnny’s re¬ 
lief, he caught the outlines of the broad wings 
of the Dust Eater as they lay spread out above 
the water. 

“ In time,” he murmured, as he directed 
Nelsie to pull alongside. 

“ Hasn’t passed yet,” Pant mumbled from 
his place in the fuselage. “ Have a quiet 
time? ” 

“ Oh, very!” Johnny’s grin was lost in the 
darkness. 

He pulled himself up to the surface of the 
lower plane. 

“ Want to come up?” He gave a hand to 
Nelsie. 


205 


206 The Black Schooner. 

“ I just want to tell you we’ve been through 
a lot to-night/’ he said to Pant. “ Wonderful 
adventure! We hadn’t seen a thing all even¬ 
ing and were about to climb down when things 
began to happen. We — ” 

“ What’s that?” Nelsie gripped his arm. 
Her ears, keener than his, had caught a faint 
click-click. The next moment, like a flash of 
light, the Black Schooner shot by them. 

“ There she goes! ” exclaimed Pant, leaping 
for his place at the wheel. “ Got to get off at 
once or we’ll lose him. Get the girl down.” 

“ Isn’t time. Take her along. Room for two 
in the back seat. Back in an hour. Want to 
go?” He reached for Nelsie’s arm. But she 
was already climbing to her place. 

“ Never flew,” she flashed back, “ except 
from a tree. This’ll be better.” 

“ The motorboat?” inquired Pant. 

“ I’ll cut her loose and she’ll drift ashore; 
the eddy leads that way.” 

Ten seconds later Johnny was buckling a 
harness about the girl. The powerful motor 


A Clue Given 


207 


thundered. They began to glide over the water. 
Then, almost imperceptibly, they began to rise. 
They were on their way, off for a journey such 
as not one of them had dreamed of, a journey 
as full of thrills as had been the earlier hours 
of that night. 

Stretching back an arm, Pant thrust some¬ 
thing into Johnny’s hand. There were two ob¬ 
jects, a crumpled bit of newspaper and a letter. 

Drawing a small flashlight from a pocket in 
the fuselage, Johnny gave it to the girl who sat 
tucked in beside him. 

“ Please hold that while I read,” he shouted 
in her ear. The thunder of the motors drowned 
his voice, but she understood. Snapping on the 
light, she held it tilted downward upon his 
hands while with nervous fingers he tore open 
the letter. This letter he knew at once from 
the handwriting was from the man who had 
hired them to watch the river. What could he 
have written. Had he told them more definite 
details of their mission? Had he complained of 
their inaction, or had he written to call them 


208 


The Black Schooner. 


off the scent? Johnny bent over the sheet, on 
which the rays of the light were flashed. 

In the meantime Pant had headed his craft 
straight out of the mouth of the river toward a 
small island which lav close to the main shore 

o' 

line. Here he must make a choice of directions. 
The Black Schooner had disappeared. There 
was a narrow channel between the island and the 
one to the north of it. The schooner might have 
gone directly north up the coast; it might have 
shot through the channel which wound in and 
out between numerous islands and the shore; 
it might have circled the island and gone di¬ 
rectly out to sea, or it might have turned south. 
He chose to go south because that led along less 
populated shores. .Something about this mys¬ 
terious Black Schooner led him to believe that 
it would seek secluded places. Pant chose to 
fly over the island and skirt the seaward shore 
of islands rather than skim along above the 
channel. For this choice he could give no rea¬ 
son, except, perhaps, the fact that out there the 
sea would be wilder, a taste of adventure which 


A Clue Given 209 

he could not help but feel sure the schooner's 
master would enjoy. 

As Johnny Thompson in the back seat scanned 
the letter before him, his brow wrinkled in 
thought. He had made no mistake; the letter 
was from his present employer. It ran, in part, 
as follows: 

“ I have been perplexed and a little disturbed 
at not hearing from you. All other people em¬ 
ployed by me in similar service have sent me 
extended reports of their operations. Have 
you nothing of importance to report? 

“ Perhaps I was wrong in giving you no clue. 
I will give you one now. Certain occurrences 
in the locality which you now occupy have led 
me to believe that my brother is operating there. 
He is my elder brother, a genius and a great in¬ 
ventor but a man with a peculiar turn of mind. 
Few of his inventions have ever been turned to 
account. He probably has his own reasons for 
this; mostly wrong ones. He is fearless, 
scrupulously honest and harmless as a child. 
He is growing old. I loved him as a boy. As 


210 


The Black Schooner .: 


a man I have seen little of him. He is my only 
remaining relative. It is only natural that I 
should desire to spend part of my declining 
years in his fascinating company. That is my 
only reason for continuing this search which 
has been long and costly. If you can assist me 
in bringing the quest to a successful issue your 
reward shall be ample.” 

This, then, was the letter which Johnny read 
as the plane carried him swiftly northward. 
Could it be that the man with gray hair stream¬ 
ing behind him as he drove the Black Schooner 
madly through the water, was Colonel Rem- 
mington’s brother? 

“ If he is,” he told himself, “ then some of 
my theories will have to be revised. There is 
not a chance in the world that a ‘ scrupulously 
honest’ man would have anything to do with 
the log-rustling that has been going on. And 
certainly no man who is 6 harmless as a child ’ 
would ever order a tree cut down knowing that 
two young people were at the top of it. 

“ And how about the safe in the split rock? 


A Clue Given 


211 


What reason could any person have for hiding 
a safe in such a place, unless he had come into 
possession of it by dishonest means? The log¬ 
rustling and the attempt to murder us by cut¬ 
ting down our tree may not have been con¬ 
nected in any way with the Black Schooner, 
but it seems almost certain that the safe in the 
split rock must. The connections are too close. 

“ Of course/’ he reflected, “ some men are 
queer. This brother of his would seem to be. 
He may have fancied that he had some secret 
to hide there in the split rock, some secret which 
did not need to be hidden at all. Such things 
have happened. 

“ There are circumstances which seem to 
point to this brother as the man of the Black 
Schooner. He appears to be of the right age. 
The wonderful demonstration of mysterious 
power at the mill the other night, and the re¬ 
markable speed of his craft attained without 
smoke or noise, would seem to point toward 
some great and startling invention. And yet, 
you never can tell.” 


212 


The Black Schooner 


His reflections were interrupted by Pant’s 
actions. Allowing his craft to volplane toward 
the sea, he adjusted his Panther Eye equipment, 
then began sweeping the water. 

Putting his lips to a speaking tube, he grum¬ 
bled: 

“ ’Fraid we’ve lost him. Thought he’d go 
north, but perhaps he didn’t. Oh, well, if worst 
comes to worst, we have another night before 
us.” 

He touched a lever, the engines thundered and 
they began climbing again. 

Bending over the side of the fuselage, Johnny 
allowed his gaze to drift out over the sea. At 
first he could catch only an inky-black surface, 
ftecked here and there with foam. But gradu¬ 
ally he became conscious of a moving speck cut¬ 
ting across beneath their path. 

“ Pant,” he trilled through the tube, “ turn 
your old Panther Eye to the left and sweep the 
sea there.” 

For a half minute there came no sound save 
the throb of the motors. Then suddenly Pant 


A Clue Given 213 

touched a lever here and another there. The 
plane turned in its course. 

“ That’s her,” he shouted back. “ All but 
missed him. He’s going straight out to sea. 
Looks like madness, in such a craft, but I sup¬ 
pose he’ll turn back soon.” 

“ Got plenty of fuel?” Johnny asked 
anxiously. 

“ Enough for a thousand miles.” 

“Good!” Johnny settled back in his place 
beside the girl, who had all this time been silent. 

“ I’m afraid we’re going to miss our break¬ 
fast,” he shouted in her ear. “ We ought to 
get back there to report our tree adventure, but 
this thing is important.” 

“ I don’t care,” said the girl. Then she 
hugged herself and shivered. 

“ She’s cold,” Johnny told himself. “ For 
that matter, so am I.” 

Motioning her to snap on the light again, he 
dug deep into the recesses of the fuselage be¬ 
fore him to drag out a heavy, fur-lined blanket. 
This he wrapped snugly about her. 


214 


The Black Schooner 


After providing himself with the same bit of 
comfort, he was about to settle back once more 
in his place when the crumpled bit of paper 
handed to him by Pant caught his eye. Remov¬ 
ing it from the recess in which he had thrust it, 
he spread it out on his knee. The glaring head¬ 
lines that struck his eye brought an exclamation 
to his lips. With an eager hand he motioned the 
girl to hold the light so he could read the finer 
print. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


A STARTLING REVELATION 

The heading to this front page of the news¬ 
paper read: 

EXPRESS TRAIN ROBBED AT 
RIVER BRIDGE 

As Johnny read the story of this daring 
robbery, the muscles of his face grew tense. 

The robbery had occurred in the dead of 
night. The train had been flagged at the bridge. 
Three armed men had covered the express mes¬ 
sengers with rifles, while two others had rolled 
a small safe containing currency and bonds, 
valued at more than fifty thousand dollars, 
across the car, and had sent it bumping down 
the embankment. 

What had happened after that no one knew, 
save that the train was at last released to go 

on its way, and that the search made some hours 

215 


216 The Black Schooner. 

later seemed to indicate that the safe had been 
carried down the river in a schooner. Certain 
natives of the country had seen a black schooner 
in the river at about that time, but had no idea 
of its name, or whence it had come, or whither 
gone. From that point the whole affair was 
shrouded in mystery. 

Eagerly Johnny searched for the date on the 
newspaper. 

“ Twelve days ago!” he breathed. “ That 
tallies pretty well with the movements of our 
Black Schooner. 

“ So that’s it,” he sighed, as he settled back 
in his seat. The owner of this mysterious silent 
schooner is not Colonel Remmington’s long-lost 
brother. Or, if he is, he’s changed mightily. 
And, of course, he may have. Men do change. 
Anyway, whoever stole that safe is a desperate 
fellow and has desperate companions.” He be¬ 
gan feeling over a machine gun strapped to the 
fuselage of the plane. 

“ Had you mostly for a decoration,” He mur¬ 
mured, “but we may need you badly yet.” 


217 


A Startling Revelation 

As he thought of it now, there remained little 
doubt in his mind but that this was the black 
schooner used in carrying away the loot from 
the train; that the safe which had rested for a 
time in the split rock was the one belonging to 
the express company; that the securities and 
money were still in the safe; and that it now 
rested in the cabin of the schooner which at this 
moment was cutting the dark waters far below 
them. 

“ And yet,” he admitted, “ there could be two 
black schooners and two small safes. Question 
is, are there? 

“ One thing’s sure: If we ever come up with 
that schooner, we’re going to move very care¬ 
fully. They’d send us to eternity without the 
bat of an eye, if they’re the fellows.” A grim 
smile curved Johnny’s lips. 

Just there he wished the girl by his side were 
safe in her home by the mill. He was destined 
to wish this several times before the adventure 
was over. 

His thoughts were quickly brought back to 


218 


The Black Schooner 


the present time and place by a shrill whistle 
at the speaking tube. It came from Pant. 

“ Schooner’s turned north,” came in brisk 
tones. “ No telling where he’ll lead us. Think 
we’d better turn back? ” 

“No.” 

“Think it’s something big?” 

“Yes. Paper makes it look that way.” 

“ How about the girl? ” 

“ She — ” Johnny paused to glance down at 
her — “ why, blamed if she isn’t asleep! Guess 
it’s the wind did it. Didn’t get her sleep last 
night.” 

“All right; cover her up snug and we’ll sail 
on. Man, oh, man, that schooner’s got speed, 
though! Seventy miles an hour and keeping 
it up. Where does he get the power, I’d like to 
know! ” 

“ That’s part of the mystery.” 

Johnny bent over and, dragging forth a great 
blanket of leather, covered the girl from head 
to foot. Nelsie did not open her eyes, but 
sighed her comfort. 


A Startling Revelation 219 

“Boo!” he shivered. “ Going north at this 
altitude’s no snap.” 

Straight on plowed the Black Schooner. 
Straight above her sailed the Dust Eater. 
Hours sped by. The sun, a red ball on the 
horizon, lifted itself higher and higher in the 
heavens. Hundreds of miles of black ocean 
sped beneath them. 

“ They think they can outlast us,” Johnny 
told himself. “ Well, perhaps they can. Who 
knows? Anyway, we’ll show them a race.” 

He found himself worrying about the fuel 
in the tanks. How manv hours would it last? 
They were many miles from land. As far as 
eye could span, there was only black, restless 
water. 

“ Dangerous to land here in a seaplane with¬ 
out fuel,” he thought. “ The plane wouldn’t 
last long.” 

But the plane, as if run by perpetual motion, 
thundered on and on. 

And now, as Johnny strained his eyes to look 
far ahead, he caught a strange gleam on the 


220 


The Black Schooner. 


horizon. Increasing in intensity moment by 
moment, this at last took on the form of a 
silvery white line. 

“ What is it?” he called through the tube. 

“ Ice,” was Pant’s laconic reply. 

“ Then we’ve got them! They’ll have to stop 
there and turn back.” 

“ Perhaps.” 

Again the motors thundered, and again 
Johnny’s ears were strained for the last pop- 
pop-sput-pop-pop which would announce that 
their fuel was exhausted, their journey at an 
end. 

Still the fuel lasted while, as the moments 
passed, the silver line became a broad mass 
of ice. 

And now apparently the master of the 
schooner has seen it. He slowed up. His mad 
career at an end, he neared the floe, then be- 
gan skirting it. His prow was now pointed 
toward the west. 

This lasted for an hour, then there appeared 
a broad break in the ice floe. From the schooner 


A Startling Revelation 221 

it must appear that this gap extended in a broad 
line quite through the floe. But to those in the 
plane it was evident that the gap was narrower 
at the farther end and slowly closing in, form¬ 
ing a trap. 

The schooner’s master dared it. The Black 
Schooner’s prow cut the narrow waters. For 
five hundred yards she shot forward. Then, 
suddenly, she slowed down. She halted with 
her prow all but upon a huge ice pan. She 
turned to find herself facing other ice pans. 
Slowly but surely they were closing in. As if 
propelled by an invisible force, they were trap¬ 
ping her. 

“ Got ’em! ” Pant breathed, as the seaplane 
circled for a landing. “ They can’t escape!” 

“ Yes,” grumbled Johnny, “ and perhaps 
neither can we!” 

“ We’ll land first and talk about that after¬ 
wards.” Pant tilted her nose downward. A 
moment or two later she glided, graceful as a 
swan, down upon the water. 

As they bumped the side of a broad ice field, 


222 


The Black Schooner, 


Nelsie awoke and, throwing the blankets from 
her, rubbed her eyes sleepily, and asked, “ Where 
are we? ” 

“ That,” said Johnny, “ is a thing I don’t 
know. Only know that we’re here, and the 
Black Schooner’s here with us.” 


CHAPTER XXIX 


THE FLYING DUTCHMAN OF 
THE ICE FLOES 

“ I think we’d do well to try to get the plane 
up on this ice pan,” suggested Johnny. “ The 
ice might swing about and crush her in the 
water.” 

“ All right,” agreed Pant. “ Just wait till I 
get out an axe and cut a path for her up onto 
the cake, then I think I can start the engines 
and slide her right up.” 

This plan proved a good one. A half-hour 
later the three of them were standing beside the 
plane, which was high and dry on the ice. 

“ There’s some canned beans, beef and sal¬ 
mon, also some tins of butter in the forward 
locker,” suggested Pant. “ What say we eat ? 
There’s a small alcohol stove for cooking.” 

223 


224 The Black Schooner 

“ I’ll be cook, ,, exclaimed Nelsie, glad to be 
of service. “ I never dreamed I’d be the chef 
on a real Arctic expedition. It’s going to be a 
real lark! ” 

“ I hope so,” said Johnny rather dubiously. 
He was thinking of the task they now faced, 
that of overhauling the Black Schooner, and 
wondering, too, how much fuel there was left 
in their tanks, and how far it would carry them. 

As soon as they had finished their meal, Pant 
began unlashing the machine gun. 

“ May need it,” he explained. 

“ Yes, we may,” said Johnny. “ If the fel¬ 
lows prove to be the train robbers, what’ll we 
do?” 

“ Capture ’em.” 

“ Yes, if they don’t capture us. But what 
then?” 

“ Arrest ’em and take ’em back to justice. A 
plain American citizen may arrest a criminal 
with stolen goods in his possession, and if they 
haven’t that safe on board the schooner, then 
you may call me a bum detective. As for tak- 


The Flying Dutchman 225 

ing care of them after we get them, that’s some¬ 
thing we’ll have to figure out later.” 

It was a rather reluctant Johnny who, a half- 
hour later, followed Pant with the machine gun 
across his shoulder as they made their way over 
the ice pack to the place where the Black 
Schooner lay waiting. He carried a high-power 
rifle and wore an automatic at his belt. Nelsie 
had been left behind to guard their camp. He 
wondered in a vague sort of way whether she 
would ever see him again. 

“ Oh, shucks! ” he said to himself. “ Prob¬ 
ably no one aboard that schooner but that light¬ 
headed old inventor brother of Colonel Rem- 
mington.” 

He did not feel at all assured of that, how¬ 
ever. As they approached nearer and nearer 
to the schooner he became more and more 
nervous. 

A wind suddenly sprang up from the north¬ 
east. Driving sharp bits of snow against their 
faces, it increased in velocity with a suddenness 
such as they had never before experienced. 


226 


The Black Schooner 


They were going at an angle to it, only half 
facing it, but for all that the particles of ice 
and snow cut like knives. 

“ Look at it come! ” Pant mumbled as he 
caught his breath hard, then, “ What’s that?” 
he exclaimed suddenly. 

Johnny screened his eyes and looked ahead. 
“ Mast of the Black Schooner, I’d say.” 

“ But — but it seems to move! ” 

“ Nonsense! It couldn’t.” 

They were still fighting their way forward. 
A giant pile of tumbled fragments of ice hid 
the thing from their view. 

“ Good wall to hide behind until we get up 
close,” said Pant. 

“ Breaks the wind, too,” said Johnny, as he 
increased his speed. 

For some time they traveled in the lee of that 
ice pile. Finally they were forced to come out 
once more into the open. It was with wildly- 
beating hearts that they stepped from behind 
their shelter. 

Instantly Johnny sprang back, crying: 


227 


The Flying Dutchman 

“ It moves! It moves! We’re right in its 
path. It will run us down. It moves through 
ice as if it were water. That — why, that's no 
real ship! It's a phantom! ” 

He would have turned and fled in wild terror 
had not Pant gripped him by the arm. 

“ Wait,” he commanded. “ She's quite a 
ways off yet. Wait and see.” 

“Thirty knots an hour,” Johnny breathed, 
as with bated breath and staring eyes he 
watched the Flying Dutchman of the ice fields 
racing toward them. 


CHAPTER XXX 


NOW I AM TO KNOW ALL! 

So startling was this weird phenomenon of 
a black schooner cutting its way through solid 
ice, that Johnny Thompson found it difficult to 
remain quietly in his place and watch. 

They were somewhere off the coast of Alaska. 
This was an ice floe from the Arctic. Ice pans, 
six feet thick and big as a city block, lay before 
the schooner, yet she appeared to pass through 
them as she might had they been composed of 
sea foam. Here, too, were piles of ice-frag¬ 
ments, ground smooth by the restless motion of 
the sea. She passed through these without dis¬ 
locating one. There came no sound of grinding 
and crushing. Only the all but inaudible swish 
of snow as it beat against the ice piles came to 
their ears, yet the schooner moved straight on. 

It was weird, fascinating beyond compare. 

» 

228 


Now I Am to Know All 229 

“ She's a phantom, a ghost of a ship,” Johnny 
murmured. 

Then, catching a low chuckle from his com¬ 
panion, he wheeled quickly about to find him 
smiling. 

“ Fooled! Tricked by the storm!” Pant 
grinned. “ That schooner doesn’t move! It 
only seems to.” 

“Only seems to?” 

“Sure! Hasn’t come any closer, has it? 
Would be here by now if it were going at the 
rate it appears to be traveling, wouldn’t it? ” 

“ Y-e-s.” 

“ It’s an optical illusion. The storm’s fooled 
us. I’ve heard of such things. The snow shoots 
in one direction so fast that it makes the 
schooner appear to be traveling rapidly in the 
opposite direction. She’s not moving; hasn’t 
been moving. She’s locked solidly in the ice.” 

“ Well,” Johnny licked his dry lips, “ that 
beats me! ” 

“ Me, too, but since things are as they are, I 
suggest that we resume operations. We can 


230 


The Black Schooner 


come up behind that big pile of broken ice off 
there to the left. Unless I miss my guess, we 
will then be only a hundred yards from the 
schooner. We’ll set the machine gun up behind 
that ice pile with a loophole through our barri¬ 
cade of ice. Then one of us can man the gun 
while the other takes the rifle and goes up to 
reconnoiter. ,, 

“ You man the gun,” said Johnny. “ If I 
ever knew anything about a machine gun, I’ve 
forgotten it. Besides, I’m for action. No hov¬ 
ering behind an ice pile waiting for things to 
happen for me! ” 

“As you say,” Pant smiled a grim smile. 
“ But you may get shot.” 

“ If I do it will be the first time.” 

“And perhaps the last.” 

“That may be. But let it rest at that. I’ll 
go. Fix up your cannon.” 

Five minutes later, as Pant with benumbed 
and trembling fingers adjusted the parts of his 
machine gun, Johnny found his teeth chattering 
in spite of all his efforts to control them. 


Now I Am to Know All 231 

“ Cold or fear ? ” he asked himself. “ Which¬ 
ever it is, I must control myself. Some mighty 
quick action may be required mighty soon.” 

That he might forget the course of action that 
lay just before him, he set his mind to work 
once more on the problem of the Black Schooner. 
Who was aboard her at this moment? Daring 
train robbers or a harmless old man? 

“ I’d rather it were the old man,” he told 
himself. “ He’d not put up a fight and he’d be 
able to tell us a lot of interesting things: What 
the wonderful power is that drives his schooner 
at such a terrific speed, without either smoke 
or noise; why he hid the safe in the split rock; 
what is in that safe; and, perhaps, what made 
the mill go without the electric current being 
turned on; and why there are eight smoke¬ 
stacks to the cabin in the woods and why our 
tree was cut down. Perhaps he could tell us 
about all these, and, again, perhaps he couldn’t. 
He might have had nothing to do with all of 
them. 

“ But I’m pretty mighty sure the train rob- 


232 


The Black Schooner 


bers are over there in the schooner, and then 
there’ll be a scrap. Of course it’s them. Why 
would a harmless old man take such chances 
to escape from a pursuing seaplane, when he 
had nothing to hide and nothing to fear?” 

“ Ready! ” whispered Pant. “ Have your 
rifle at alert. If you scent danger, step aside 
and I’ll send a few bullets singing over their 
heads. If that doesn’t work, I’ll lower my 
sight and riddle their cabin as if it were a 
pasteboard box. So long,” he said, as Johnny 
stepped out from behind the ice pile. “ And 
may you come back! ” 

That hundred yards to the schooner seemed 
a mile as, bending low, Johnny leaped into the 
teeth of the storm. There was a round window 
in the bow of the schooner through which he 
could be seen. A shot from this window might 
bring him down before he had gone ten paces. 

Yet nothing happened. The schooner was as 
silent as a grave. Now he had covered twenty 
yards, now thirty, fifty, seventy, and now — 
now he leaped into the protecting shadows of 


Now I Am to Know All 233 

the schooner. For the moment he was safe. 

Holding his rifle in a position for instant de¬ 
fense, he paused to catch his breath. 

Only a moment was thus spent; then, creep¬ 
ing around to the after-deck, he dragged him¬ 
self over the rail. 

“ I’m here,” he panted. 

His heart was beating loudly, but his nerves 
were steady. Setting his lips tight, he moved 
down the deck toward an opening in the fore¬ 
castle. The outer door stood ajar. Pushing it 
open, he peered within. 

He found himself looking into a sort of 
broad anteroom that ended with a closed door. 
The solitary object in this room caught and 
held his eye. For ten seconds he stood there 
motionless, fascinated, staring. 

What he saw was a small steel safe. He 
recognized it at once as the one he had seen in 
the split rock. 

“ The express company’s safe. And yet, is 
it? The express company’s safes are lettered 
with the name of the company. No name is on 


234 


The Black Schooner 


this safe. But it might have been painted over," 
he told himself. 

Then, suddenly, he realized that the time had 
come for action and that the danger was far 
greater than he had anticipated. In this hall¬ 
way, he was completely hidden from Pant’s 
view; he might be overpowered and killed be¬ 
fore Pant knew what was happening. 

Yet he did not hesitate. With his heart beat¬ 
ing a tune in unison with the wild thunder of 
the storm, he stepped forward and thumped a 
loud tattoo on the door. 

For a moment there was silence; then there 
came a sound of shuffling feet. 

Johnny’s rifle shifted to an advantageous, 
position. There was the sound of a lifted latch; 
the door began to open. 

“ Now,” Johnny breathed, “ now, I am to 
know all! ” 


CHAPTER XXXI 


SECRETS REVEALED 

The door to the schooner’s forecastle was 
not opened slowly, as if by someone in fear or 
distrust, but briskly as a business man’s office 
door might be opened. Johnny found himself 
facing a smiling old gentleman who said simply: 

“ Well? ” 

Johnny’s eyes had time to take him in before 
his astonished mind could frame an answer. 
His snow-white hair was long and flowing but 
carefully combed and scrupulously clean. His 
clothing was spotless and appeared to have been 
pressed only yesterday. His face radiated a 
wholesome cleanness which spoke of a long life 
of clean, sane living, for the man who stood 
before him must be well on to seventy. 

“ Can it be Colonel Remmington’s brother?” 
Johnny asked himself. 

As if reading his thoughts, the man smiled 

235 


236 


The Black Schooner 


and said, “ I am Colonel Remmington’s brother. 
He doubtless sent you. I don’t resent your com¬ 
ing — rather like it in fact. Shows the old 
rascal still harbors a brotherly feeling for me. 
Won’t you come in?” 

“ Excuse me,” said Johnny, regaining his 
power of speech, “ but I have a friend out there 
in the storm.” 

“ Why, so you have!” exclaimed the re¬ 
cluse. “ They call him ‘ Pant/ do they not?” 

“ Yes,” smiled Johnnie, wondering meantime 
how this strange man could know so much. 

“ By all means go and bring him,” said the 
old man. “ Let’s have a regular party.” 

Feeling the genial warmth of the cabin on his 
cheek, Johnny stole a glance within. The whole 
place reflected the nature of its owner. It : 
spoke of culture, refinement and a genial wel¬ 
come, all of which Johnny had not expected to 
find. All thought of train-robbers and of men 
who chop down trees to kill, was banished from 
his mind. Yet mysteries enough remained to 
be revealed. Then he thought of Nelsie. 


Secrets Revealed 


237 


“ Excuse me,” he said, “ but there is still 
another, one less used to hardships than we, a 
girl.” 

“ So-ho! ” laughed the other. “ You brought 
little Nelsie along? Then we shall have a 
merry party indeed. Go bring your friends, 
and, since they must be hungry, I will be pre¬ 
paring a feast for them, a strange bit of ori¬ 
ental food which I discovered while on my 
cruise in Japan.” 

An hour later the three friends were prais¬ 
ing the food their new-found host had prepared 
for them, and at the same time gazing about 
them in awed interest at all the strange and 
mysterious curios that adorned the walls of this 
unusual cabin. 

“ I suppose,” said their host at length, “ that 
there are several mysteries which you would 
be glad to have me reveal.” He smiled as they 
started forward in their seats. “ You are very 
fortunate, being the only persons to whom 1 
ever purposed to reveal a secret. For once I 
am ready to answer questions, for, at last, it 


238 


The Black Schooner 


does not really matter; at least it cannot matter 
to me, and as for the rest of the world, per¬ 
haps it is better that they should know. I am 
ready.” He settled back comfortably in his 
chair. “ You ask questions. If I know the 
answer, I will give it to you as truthfully as I 
can.” 

For a full moment the trio sat in dumb si¬ 
lence. This was so far from their wildest 
dreams that they did not know how to act or 
even to think. 

“ Well,” the host smiled at last, “ who shall 
be first? The lady, of course. Courtesy de¬ 
mands it.” 

“ Who cut down our lookout tree, and why 
did they do it?” Nelsie asked quickly. 

The man’s face took on a puzzled expres¬ 
sion. “Your lookout tree? Has it been cut 
down? ” 

“ While we were in the top of it.” 

“ What! ” the host started forward. “ Surely 
— surely no one would do a deed so inhuman 
and cowardly! ” 


Secrets Revealed 


239 


“ They did though.” 

“ Well, that,” said the old man, settling back 
with a hurt look on his face, “you could not 
expect me to know the answer to. Had I known 
of such villains in this world of ours I should 
have moved heaven and earth to bring them to 
justice.” 

“Oh! forgive me!” cried Nelsie, overcome 
with mortification. “ The question was at the 
tip of my tongue and I spoke before I thought.” 

“ Nothing is easier than forgiving a fair 
young lady,” he smiled, as he bent forward and 
touched her fingers to his lips. 

“ And now,” he said briskly, “ who will be 
next? ” 

“ Why did you hide the safe in the split 
rock?” asked Johnny. 

“That, now, is something I can tell you,” 
smiled their host “ It is, moreover, bound up 
with several other secrets and I will tell them 
all at once.” 

“You have noticed,” he said, leaning for¬ 
ward in his chair, “ that this schooner is pos- 


240 The Black Schooner 

sessed of a peculiar and powerful mode of 
locomotion ? ” 

Johnny nodded. 

“ This power,” he went on, “ is electrical, but 
not such electricity as you have ever heard of 
before. You know about batteries. You know 
that a certain acid is necessary to give batteries 
power. Certain liquids store up more power 
than others. That is a matter of common 
knowledge. Well, once while exploring the 
north coast of Russia, in a little village called 
Kingagin, I found a witch-doctor who used as 
a medicine a peculiar, and to the outside world, 
an unknown, acid. Being in need of acid for 
my engine’s storage batteries, I tried some of 
this. Imagine my surprise at finding that this 
acid gave my batteries a power ten times as 
great as that produced by any other acid. 

“ I at once began inquiries regarding the 
source of supply of this acid. At first I could 
get no satisfactory reply but at last, when I 
had offered the crafty witch-doctor about every¬ 
thing I had aboard my schooner, he led me to 


Secrets Revealed 241 

a place up the river where the acid was actually 
seeping out from a rocky crevice. 

“ I remained in that place long enough to 
load my schooner with receptacles filled with 
this strange fluid, then went on my way. Ever 
since that time my schooner has been run by 
batteries filled with this mysterious and power-' 
ful acid. I don’t pretend to explain it; I only 
know the power is there and I use it.” 

“ It is a great discovery,” breathed Johnny, 
“ one of the greatest the world has ever known.” 

“ And the secret will die with me,” smiled 
the old man. “The acid I had on board is at 

this time mingling with the salt water of the 

« 

sea. There is not a drop left on board. I 
poured it out but two hours ago. The place 
of its origin I will not reveal — that secret must 
remain untold.” 

“ But think what it would mean to the world,” 
breathed Johnny. “ How much more easily 
the wheels of all the factories of all the world 
might be turned! ” 

“And to what purpose?” asked his host. 


242 


The Black Schooner 


“ That the rich might be made richer and more 
powerful; that from the poor should be taken 
some of their opportunity to earn bread ?” 

Johnny knew that this theory regarding the 
relation of employment and power had been ex¬ 
ploded long ago, but realizing the futility of 
arguing with an old man, he remained silent. 
Only to himself he said, “ I begin to see where 
Colonel Remmington found grounds for saying 
his brother was peculiar.” 

“ But that does not tell us why you hid the 
safe at the bottom of the river,” said Pant. 

“ Ah, so it doesn’t. I was coming to that. 
You see,” the old man smiled, “ I had a fancy 
that at some time, in the dim and distant fu¬ 
ture, the human race would be ready to receive 
my great secret. I conceived the idea of hiding 
this secret in a safe made of an alloy that re¬ 
sists rust and corroding, and the best place I 
could think of for hiding it was the split rock 
in the river. I tremble now as I think of how 
near you came to getting that secret by lifting 
the safe. 


Secrets Revealed 


243 


“ Of course, when I saw you had discovered 
the safe, I at once removed it. It at that time, 
of course, contained a description of the place 
where the acid might be found and a sample 
of the strange fluid. Now it contains only a 
metal box filled with some odds and ends of 
more or less valuable papers which I shall ask 
you to take to my brother. ,, 

“ You mean, which you are going to take,” 
smiled Johnny. “ Surely, after reading this 
letter, you cannot refuse to return with us.” 

He handed to him the letter he had received 
from Colonel Remmington. 

The old man's eyes were strangely misty as 
he finished reading it. 

“ Alas, perhaps I have made a grievous mis¬ 
take,” he sighed, “but I have enjoyed living 
alone and so I have done it. If things were 
different now I might change, but since they 
are as they are, the die is cast. I shall never 
return.” 

“ I suppose,” he said at last, “ that this mys¬ 
terious acid accounts for the moving of the 


244 The Black Schooner 

wheels of the sawmill on that night not long 
ago ? ” 

“ Yes,” smiled the old man, “ it does. I 
had not counted upon your being about. I 
had always wished to try this power upon a 
great mill and, having arranged everything 
about the mill so nothing could be harmed, pro¬ 
ceeded to do it. It worked perfectly, did it 
not?” 

“ Too perfectly,” smiled Johnny. “ Came near 
being the death of me.” 

“ There is one other thing,” said Pant. “ The 
cabin of ‘eight smokes/ How about that?” 

“ That,” said the inventor, “ is a secret which 
concerns you greatly, for in it you may find 
a small fortune. I am going to reveal one of 
my discoveries and you may feel free to reap 
any benefit which may come from it.” 

“You are aware,” he smiled, “that the oils 

i 

in wood may be obtained by baking the wood 
or leaves in a furnace. These eight smoke¬ 
stacks were simply the smoke pipes of eight 
small furnaces. Perhaps you do not know that 


Secrets Revealed 


245 


leather is prepared for commercial uses by the 
aid of certain vegetable oils which contain tan¬ 
nin. I have been seeking for an oil that would 
give me the result I sought. At present all 
the tannin used in the preparation of very 
white leather comes from Europe. I was 
seeking a plant that would give us the desired 
result in America. I found it. In the upper 
right-hand corner of my safe you will find the 
name of the plant and some notes regarding 
the process of extracting the oil. This is what 
the world calls a valuable commercial secret. 
If you are interested in money, as I have never 
been, but as most young people are, you will 
find that this secret will go far toward making 
your fortunes. My brother is a shrewd man 
and will do much toward making your secret 
pay big dividends. 

“ I have only one favor to ask in return for 
this secret.” He settled back in his chair as 
if a great weariness had overcome him. “ It 
is simply this, that you return to the schooner 
in twenty-four hours and that, after removing 


246 


The Black Schooner 


your notes and the metal box of papers from 
the safe, you turn the valve in yonder far 
corner three complete revolutions to the right. 
The schooner is of iron. The valve lets in the 
water. The schooner will sink in a half hour, 
so do not loiter about.” 

“ That,” said Johnny, “ would be murder.” 

“ Oh, no. I shall not be here.” 

“ Where shall you go? This is an ice floe.” 

“ I shall be in my berth, sleeping the long 
sleep. A great specialist has given me just 
twelve hours more to live. I feel sure he is 
right. I feel it creeping upon me now and shall 
ask you to leave me. I have nothing to regret 
and nothing to fear. I have lived a long, 
happy and contented life and am prepared for 
whatever the future may have to offer.” 

As the three young people rose to tiptoe from 
the room they felt that they were already in 
the presence of death. 

Twenty-four and a half hours later the mast 
of the schooner wavered for an instant in mid¬ 
air, then sank suddenly from sight. 


CHAPTER XXXII 


OTHER MYSTERIES UNCOVERED 
There was sufficient fuel left in the tanks 

I 

of the Dust Eater to carry the two boys and 
Nelsie to a radio station fifty miles away on 
the coast of Alaska. Here they were able to 
obtain fuel for the return journey and to notify 
their friends and relatives of their safety. 

The sun was shining brightly and the sea 
was calm as the Dust Eater at last came to rest 
on the surface of the bay at the mouth of their 
river. It was only an hour later that Nelsie 
found herself folded in her mother's embrace. 

The uncovering of other mysteries came thick 
and fast. The mystery of the fallen lookout 
tree had already been cleared up. When Nel¬ 
sie did not return to her home, a searching 
party was formed. Members of this party 
came upon a man wandering about the woods 

247 


248 The Black Schooner 

in a dazed condition. When led back to the 
village and revived by food and stimulants, he 
turned states-evidence and revealed the fact that 
he was one of a gang of timber rustlers that 
had for a long time been robbing the mill. He 
also admitted helping to cut down the lookout 
tree but denied any knowledge of Johnny and 
Nelsie being at the top of the tree at the time. 
Johnny’s good right arm was accountable for 
his dazed condition when captured. The re¬ 
mainder of the gang were taken into custody 
the same day, so the river was cleared of tim¬ 
ber thieves. It is strongly suspected that these 
were the men who in such a strange manner 
set the forest on the point on fire, but this they 
have never admitted so the matter still remains 
a mystery. The tall man who had come to 
their rescue that memorable night of the fire 
was none other than the owner of the Black 
Schooner. 

As for the express company’s safe, it was 
soon after found, empty and sunk to the bottom 
of a deep pool in the river. 


Other Mysteries Uncovered 249 

When the boys had made their report to 
Colonel Remmington, he turned to them with 
shining eyes. 

“ My brother/’ he said, “ was a strange man. 
He died and was buried as strangely as he lived. 
You have done me a great service. How shall 
I repay you?” 

“ Only by looking after the patent process 
which he was so kind as to give us, the secret 
for tanning white leather,” said Johnny 
promptly. 

“ I shall do that gladly,” smiled the Colonel, 
“ and shall see that the proceeds are ample. 
How many ways are the proceeds to be di¬ 
vided?” 

“ Three,” said Johnny. “ Nelsie is in on it. 
She needs the money for high school and col¬ 
lege.” 

“ Is that your wish?” asked Colonel Rem¬ 
mington turning to Pant. 

“ Absolutely.” 

“ All right. Then for the present it is good- 


250 


The Black Schooner 


bye and again I thank you.” With that he 

bowed them out of the room. 

****** 

During the night of the forest fire, Pant had 
assured Johnny that the Cumberland Moun¬ 
tains of Kentucky, the land of feuds and moon¬ 
shine, was a wonderful place for adventure. 
Strangely enough, they had scarcely returned 
from their row with the Black Schooner when 
a letter came to them inviting them to go into 
the heart of these very Cumberland Mountains 
to look into the holdings of an owner of a 
“ blanket survey.” 

“ Whatever that is,” said Pant as he read 
the letter. 

“ Yes, whatever it is!” exclaimed Johnny. 
“ Sounds good to me. I’m for it.” 

So it was decided at once that they should 
go. They did go and adventures enough they 
had, but that must be told in our next book, 
“ The Hidden Trail.” 

THE END. 






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